Two recent volumes exploring race and material culture in Brazil challenge established notions of Brazilian modernism and its articulation in Salvador da Bahia, São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro. Historian Anadelia A. Romo’s Selling Black Brazil: Race, Nation, and Visual Culture in Salvador, Bahia argues that the Bahian tourism industry relied extensively on images to promote the city of Salvador as attractive and exotic, ultimately redefining Black culture in the nation’s imaginary. In six chapters primarily focused on the 1940s and 1950s, she demystifies lauded figures like the French-born photographer-turned-ethnographer Pierre Verger, the novelist Jorge Amado, and the Argentinean-born illustrator Carybé (Héctor Julio Páride Bernabó) by looking at their training and the circulation of their images and writings. Also focusing on the first half of the twentieth century, art historian Rafael Cardoso leverages illustrated periodicals, cartoons, and graphic design to destabilize the centrality of antropofagia and the Semana de 22...

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