Bending reality: Untitled (2), from The Profit Corner series, 2016, Mário Macilau
"Reality and fantasy overlap in the socially motivated photographs of Mário Macilau, a skilled portraitist who prefers to work on long-term projects. His output includes series focused on street children, e-waste pickers and the elderly.
Notwithstanding his keen interest in foregrounding Mozambique’s pressing social issues, Macilau’s photographs often rupture the conventions of social realism. His repeated figuring of rural peasants and the urban poor (“the ghosts of society”, he has called them) is matched by a persistent use of performance and play, in particular masquerade and disguise, to expand the meaning of his photography."
