Owner of a multidisciplinary artistic practice, Miguel Rio Branco conceives works within the medium of photography, cinema, and installation. Since the 1980s he is internationally recognized for his photographic work, in which the chromatic contrast and images highlight fundamental human questions, exploring themes such as sensuality, joy, violence, decay, and death. By softening the contours of images and using mirroring and textures, his poetics comes together as a kind of collage, a living archive of captured impressions. Recurrent in the artist’s practice, his polyptychs are an exercise on the possibilities of shaping images to build endless narratives. 

Recently, Rio Branco held solo shows in France, Spain, Japan, The Netherlands, Switzerland, and in Brazil. From which stand out the survey exhibition Palavras cruzadas, sonhadas, rasgadas, roubadas, usadas, sangradas, Instituto Moreira Salles – IMS, São Paulo (2021), IMS Rio de Janeiro (2022), and Fundação Iberê Camargo, Porto Alegre, Brazil (2023); De Tokyo Blues hacia Gritos Sordos, Centro Niemeyer, Avilés, Spain (2024); Photographies 1968-1992, Le Bal, Paris, France (2020); Nada levarei qundo morrer, MASP, São Paulo, Brazil (2017); and Teoria da Cor, Pinacoteca de São Paulo, Brazil (2014). In addition, the Instituto Inhotim, in Brumadinho, Minas Gerais, maintains since 2010, a gallery dedicated to his work. 

Among his group exhibitions are noteworthy: Four Photographers, Four Places, MoMA, New York, USA (2019); 33th Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil (2018); Maison Européene de la Photographie, Paris, France (2018); Troposphere, Beijing Minsheng Art Museum, Beijing, China (2017); Os Muitos e o Um, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo, Brazil (2016); América Latina 1963-2013, Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, Paris, France (2013). 

His photos have been published in magazines including Aperture, Stern, Photo Magazine, Europeo, Paseante, and National Geographic. Miguel Rio Branco’s work is part of several institutional collections, among them: MoMA, USA; MAM Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; MAM São Paulo, Brazil; MASP, Brazil; Centre Georges Pompidou, France; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, USA; Stedelijk Museum, Netherlands; Museum of Photographic Arts of San Diego, USA; and Metropolitan Museum of Art, USA.