Marcel Gautherot

Marcel Gautherot (Paris, 1910 – Rio de Janeiro, 1996) was French Brazilian photographer.
During the 20s he lived in Paris, where he started to study at the university of architecture. In those years he got in contact with the Bauhaus movement and the work of Le Corbusier, leaving incomplete his architecture studies.
Influenced by the modern novel by Jorge Amado – Jubiabá – the artist decided to visit Brazil. He arrived in the country in 1939, where he then lived and worked for 57 years.
Settled in Rio de Janeiro, Gautherot started to attend the circle of intellectuals linked to modernism, like Rodrigo Melo Franco de Andrade, Carlos Drummond, Mário de Andrade, Lúcio Costa, Burle Marx, among others. He began his photographic career working for SPHAN, the Folklore Museum and for the magazine O Cruzeiro.
In 1986, together with Pierre Verger, he received from the State Government of Rio de Janeiro, the Golden Dolphin Award for Photography.
His collection consists of over 25,000 negatives and currently belongs to the Instituto Moreira Salles in Rio de Janeiro. He travelled and documented through photography 18 different Brazilian through their people, architecture and festivals making his collection a broad picture of the country’s cultural diversity. He died in Rio de Janeiro in 1996 at the age of 86.