Forty years of the photobook Quarenta clics em Curitiba, by Leminski e Pires

abstract Quarenta clics em Curitiba, published in 1976, is a rare, almost unprecedented example of a Brazilian literary photobook. Conceived collaboratively by Paulo Leminski and Jack Pires, the work does not appear in any anthology dedicated to the “photobook” genre. Neither is it mentioned as an artist book project in specialized publications. It is, in sum, neglected by literary criticism and by historiography. This is Leminski’s sole inter-mediatic experiment and the author’s first haiku publication. In this paper, we introduce Quarenta clics em Curitiba, alternating excerpts from this work with fragments from Click: Zen e a Arte da Fotografia, an essay in which Leminski, who is considered one of the most creative and important Brazilian writers of the second half of the twentieth century, describes the various stages of this photobook project.