ÎlE BRÈSIL
return to altamira
walls|THE Amazon
audiovisual installatiONS
my body is political
copan
CREATING DESERTS
nnipas
COMISSIONS
EXHIBITONS|INTERVENTIONS
publications
ABOUT
Biography
Vincent Catala is a French photographer born in Paris. A member of Agence VU, he has lived and worked in Brazil for over ten years. In both his commissioned work and his personal projects, he explores the relationship between individuals and their environment, and the subjective ways this relationship is experienced and represented: solitude, resilience, freedom.
Drawn to long-term approaches, he focuses on specific territories that are clearly defined yet complex. These places offer a particular view of the world, where a sense of universality emerges through encounters and a given geography. His work often addresses the margins of the anonymous city and a Brazil shaped by the tension between a form of fatalism rooted in deep-seated atavisms and a strong desire for change.
His work has been widely published, including in M le magazine du Monde, Télérama, Fisheye, Revista ZUM, and Air France Magazine, and has been exhibited in Paris, Amman, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Tbilisi, Braga, and Cadaqués.
In 2015, his work entered the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro (MAM/RJ). At the 2017 edition of Paris Photo, Galerie VU presented part of his work on Brazil. Two years later, the Instituto Moreira Salles (IMS/SP) presented this work in São Paulo.
In October 2025, Éditions Dunes published a monograph dedicated to the series Île Brésil, which was shortlisted for the 2025 Nadar Prize. That same autumn, Galerie VU’ exhibited part of the series. The Museum of Photography in Charleroi will present the complete Île Brésil series from May to September 2026.