Otto Stupakoff and Fashion Photography: His Studio

Even in the midst of his constant comings and goings—and despite his clear preference for shooting outdoors, where the greater need to improvise in the face of the unpredictable led him to produce work that was broader and richer—Otto still ended up having several studios. He was very productive in all of them, to some extent, but they were all essentially set up as the antithesis of a formal studio. Even his first one in Porto Alegre, which was actually built as a studio, contained features of a non-studio. All the buildings he designed, built, or lived in throughout his life were always attempts to turn the studio into a comfortable and welcoming place, more like an artist's atelier than a set-up that was suitable for his work.                                Extract from a text by Bob Wolfenson for the exhibition (November 2016)                   

Otto's best pictures of nudes and feminine beauty tended to be uncommissioned photos of women with whom he had a close emotional relationship. With his unique and sensual vision, he photographed them in sessions at his studios or home, trying to exhaust every last possibility from the meeting between photographer and model to create a visceral work of art. Otto found his search for beauty to be best expressed in the female face and body, and this idea permeated his work throughout his entire career. In October 1980, the author Jorge Amado, who knew Otto well and was a great admirer of his work, wrote: "We are witnesses to the artist's unremitting persistence, to the mind that seeks the very limits of beauty. This is how real creative works are made, and Otto, with his love of life, carried that ultimate light, the most beautiful and true light, in his heart."

In late 1967 and early 1968, during the Vietnam War, Otto spent time photographing Saigon (current city of  Ho Chi Minh) extensively, just two weeks before the Tet Offensive, which would cause hundreds of deaths, However he captured a Saigon with its streets full of life, offering a unique perspective on the city's pulse and the beauty of Vietnamese women.

Between 1976 and 1980, upon his return to Brazil, Otto produced iconic pictures such as an original series of nudes, shot in 1978 at his home in Joatinga, in Rio de Janeiro, and photographs for special editions of Vogue Brazil, such as the one dedicated to the famous brazilian model Xuxa. It was, however, a disappointing time for him in terms of opportunities. In 1981, he decided to move permanently to New York, where he embarked on an intensive period of work throughout the 1980s and 1990s. He took photographs for magazines and worked on projects such as the 1992 book "Art to Wear," by Julie Schafler Dale, and a 1994 documentary on the victims of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia for the Cambodia Trust's humanitarian fund. He also traveled extensively around the world, including four trips to the Arctic.

Around the turn of the millennium, Otto Stupakoff slowly started to get rid of his possessions and distance himself from those close to him, opting to live in voluntary exile in Thailand and at various addresses in the United States. This isolation was interrupted by insistent overtures from Fermando Lazlo and Bob Wolfenson. These two photographers from a later generation sought him out in an attempt to promote his career and publicize his work, which had been almost forgotten in Brazil by then. It was only in 2005 that he made the permanent move back to São Paulo, where he was honored with the "Fashion without Borders" exhibition, organized and curated by Wolfenson with the help of Lazlo as part of São Paulo Fashion Week. The show provokes the definitive return of Stupakoff to his motherland.