Bruno Corisco: Visual mockery as a weapon of communication

Photographer and musician Bruno Corisco builds an unorthodox visual practice that moves between mockery, Jungian psyche, and the exploration of landscapes transformed by fire. Based in Nova Friburgo, in the mountainous region of Rio de Janeiro, he develops a unique gaze that began at age 5 with a Kodak Instamatic 44 camera – “just like a little brick” – bought by his mother in a market, and which evolved into a search to “personalize” the world through the photographic frame. His trajectory, marked by “weird” photos and lost images on faulty hard drives, recently turned into a more conscious exploration of the photographic act as a form of meta-communication with his “159 people on Instagram.”

His image “Nero“, a finalist in the Single Image category of the FotoDoc Photo Contest 2025, was born from a moment of visual mockery during a return trip from Inhotim in September 2024. The photograph captures the raw irony of a hill scorched by wildfires contrasting with a “Viva Feliz” (Live Happy) sign in a spectacular blue – a combination that made Corisco pull over to the roadside first for the provocation, then for the perception of the scene’s conversational potential. The image gave rise to a series dedicated to the wildfires found on his journeys, perfectly synthesizing his approach: finding in everyday life frames that problematize reality and generate conversations about the “edited and personalized” world that photography allows us to create.

Learn more about this journey between music, analytical psychology, and agriculture in the following interview.

Imagem do Portfólio Complexo Materno, de Bruno Corisco, selecionado no Prêmio Portfólio FotoDoc 2025.

How old are you? Where do you currently live and work?

I am 42 years old. I live in Nova Friburgo, in the mountainous region of Rio de Janeiro.

Tell us about your journey in photography. When did you start photographing and why? What role does photography play in your life?

Ah. I was about 5 years old. My mother asked me if I wanted a camera while we were in line at the market. I said yes. A Kodak Instamatic 44. Just like a little brick. Soon after, she was kinda complaining that I only took weird pictures and that developing them was expensive. From then on, I took a lot of strange photos. I developed them, lost them, edited them, lost them on faulty hard drives. I keep the more recent ones more carefully. I never had any real pretension about the act of photographing before. It was just for fun. It gave me pleasure (it still does) to take a piece of what the eye sees and explore, through a tool, the possibility of personalizing it. It must be a bit heretical, I don’t know. Maybe for someone. But today, kinda problematizing this, I think it has to do with wanting to believe that the world framed, edited, personalized, seen through a physical medium is possible, pleasurable, and aesthetically appreciable. It is also a form of communication. If a viewer feels something with that image, a meta-conversation is already happening there. And it’s lately, precisely because of this possibility, that I’ve been sharing some photos with the 159 people who follow my Instagram XD.

Tell us about your finalist work for the FotoDoc Photo Contest 2025. When and where was it created? What is its concept? How does it fit into your photographic practice?

I took this photo in September 2024. My wife and I were returning from Inhotim. The mockery of that sight made me pull over on the roadside. The scorched hill with a “Viva Feliz” (Live Happy) sign in a spectacular blue. I stopped for the mockery, but then I understood how much conversation that simple image could generate. So much so that I later started a series because of it. All centered around the wildfires I find along the way.

What projects are you currently working on? What are your near-future plans for photographic production?

I am currently working on a few other things. I’m also a musician. One of the things I’ve been exploring is composing soundtracks, music, related to the photographic series. Kind of experimenting with transposing visual sensations into auditory ones. I also started a series where I’ve been following the work of farmers in the region where I live. It’s still a seminal project, but it has been generating good images. I also continue to collect images that allude to the studies of the human psyche from a Jungian perspective. It’s something that interests me a lot. I want to communicate (or meta-communicate) with people through this channel of the unconscious that art makes possible.