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Lot Essay
Mário Macilau took his first photographs while working as a market trader in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. Borrowing a friend’s camera at the age of fourteen, he dreamt of becoming a journalist and began photographing his surroundings and documenting people from the townships as they travelled to the city to ply their wares. He acquired his first camera in 2007 by trading it for a mobile phone given to him by his mother, and converted a room in her house into a darkroom.
Macilau’s practice centres around portraiture, in which he strives toward mining the depths of intimacy from his sitters. As in much great portraiture, his subjects are situated between vulnerability, strength and resilience. Out of the images’ atmosphere of intimacy, broader narratives and perspectives emerge relating to social imbalance, environmental disaster and poverty. Macilau seeks to express his sitters’ individuality, dignity and most of all, their humanity. There is a powerful conscience running through his work which seeks to use the evidentiary force of photography to produce beautiful, emotive images that document and comment on the lives of marginalised people.
Untitled 2 is from Macilau’s Price of Cement series which was executed in 2013. The series documents the shocking illegal work practices at play in the cement-bagging business in Mozambique. A young boy, brow slightly furrowed, gazes directly at the viewer.
My Toy is taken from Macilau’s Grand Hotel series. The Grand Hotel was open between 1952 and 1963 while Mozambique was still a Portuguese colony. It was the largest and regarded as the most exquisite on the continent. It became a refugee camp during the Civil War and after 1981 was taken over by the local population. In the present day in has a fluctuating population of around a thousand people living in harsh and impoverished conditions. It is regarded locally as being wild and lawless. The Grand Hotel is a powerful symbol of how Mozambique's history has shaped its present. We see a child, presumably one of the many residents, with their eyes fixed outwards and clinging on to their European-style doll.
Macilau was shortlisted for the 2019 Mast Award. He was a finalist of the Unicef Photo of the Year in 2009 and the Greenpeace Photo Award 2016, and his work is in the permanent collection of the Centre Pompidou, Paris. Selected exhibitions include Songs of the Present, Musée de la Photographie de Saint Louis, Senegal (2018); Afrique Capitales, La Villette, Paris (2017); Pavilion of the Holy See, 56th Venice Biennale (2015); Pangaea: Art from Africa and Latin America, Saatchi Gallery, London (2014); VI Chobi Mela Photo Festival, Dhaka, Bangladesh (2011); and Lagos Photo, Lagos, Nigeria (2011).
Macilau’s practice centres around portraiture, in which he strives toward mining the depths of intimacy from his sitters. As in much great portraiture, his subjects are situated between vulnerability, strength and resilience. Out of the images’ atmosphere of intimacy, broader narratives and perspectives emerge relating to social imbalance, environmental disaster and poverty. Macilau seeks to express his sitters’ individuality, dignity and most of all, their humanity. There is a powerful conscience running through his work which seeks to use the evidentiary force of photography to produce beautiful, emotive images that document and comment on the lives of marginalised people.
Untitled 2 is from Macilau’s Price of Cement series which was executed in 2013. The series documents the shocking illegal work practices at play in the cement-bagging business in Mozambique. A young boy, brow slightly furrowed, gazes directly at the viewer.
My Toy is taken from Macilau’s Grand Hotel series. The Grand Hotel was open between 1952 and 1963 while Mozambique was still a Portuguese colony. It was the largest and regarded as the most exquisite on the continent. It became a refugee camp during the Civil War and after 1981 was taken over by the local population. In the present day in has a fluctuating population of around a thousand people living in harsh and impoverished conditions. It is regarded locally as being wild and lawless. The Grand Hotel is a powerful symbol of how Mozambique's history has shaped its present. We see a child, presumably one of the many residents, with their eyes fixed outwards and clinging on to their European-style doll.
Macilau was shortlisted for the 2019 Mast Award. He was a finalist of the Unicef Photo of the Year in 2009 and the Greenpeace Photo Award 2016, and his work is in the permanent collection of the Centre Pompidou, Paris. Selected exhibitions include Songs of the Present, Musée de la Photographie de Saint Louis, Senegal (2018); Afrique Capitales, La Villette, Paris (2017); Pavilion of the Holy See, 56th Venice Biennale (2015); Pangaea: Art from Africa and Latin America, Saatchi Gallery, London (2014); VI Chobi Mela Photo Festival, Dhaka, Bangladesh (2011); and Lagos Photo, Lagos, Nigeria (2011).