André Penteado (São Paulo, Brazil, 1970) lives and works in São Paulo. His practice brings together photography, video and text in an inquiry that combines documentary research, microhistory and subjective reflection. His career began in 1998 and has been shaped by the intersection of events in Brazilian history that predate the invention of photography with emotionally charged personal experiences.
The artist's projects emerge from long periods of archival research, reading historical scholarship and conducting interviews. For Penteado, documentary photography parallels historiography, and the photographic act functions as an archaeological gesture: a device capable of recovering fragments, traces and absences. Visually, his images are marked by the use of flash to eliminate shadows, revealing details that might otherwise remain hidden. His research into revolutions such as the Cabanagem (Pará, 1835–1840) and the Farroupilha (Rio Grande do Sul, 1835–1845), as well as the French Artistic Mission (Missão Francesa, 1816), repositions photography as a means of revisiting national identity and critiquing the persistence of Eurocentric models in the formation of Brazilian art and society.
Another decisive strand of Penteado's work arises from a personal experience of grief. His series O Suicídio de Meu Pai, begun after his father's death, gave rise to the eponymous book (2014) and was followed by Não Estou Sozinho (2016), in which portraits, empty spaces and images of objects compose a reflection on grief in the aftermath of suicide. The photobook's dense, unrelieved organization of Não Estou Sozinho gives material form to the psychological experience of its subject matter. Photobooks are among the central media of his work, alongside installations and exhibitions in which the relationship between image, text and space is conceived as a narrative device.
Penteado's work is held in the collections of the Pinacoteca de São Paulo, the Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR), the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes do Rio de Janeiro, the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Casa das Onze Janelas (Belém), the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (Paris), the Universidad de Sevilla and the Fundação Marcos Amaro. His solo exhibitions include ReFundação (Museu da Inconfidência, Ouro Preto, 2024, and Galeria Reocupa, São Paulo, 2023), Desmedida (Zipper Galeria, 2018), Missão Francesa (Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, Rio de Janeiro, and Zipper Galeria, 2017), Não Estou Sozinho (Centro Cultural São Paulo, 2016), Imagem-Movimento (Zipper Galeria, 2016) and Dad's Suicide (Festival de la Luz, Buenos Aires, 2012; Photofusion Gallery, London, 2011), among others. He received the Prêmio Nacional de Fotografia Pierre Verger 2012–2013. He has published the photobooks Farroupilha, Missão Francesa, Não Estou Sozinho, Cabanagem and O Suicídio de Meu Pai.