Rafael Pavarotti brings his colour to Paris

Rafael Pavarotti’s photographs have travelled widely. In Paris, they are being read in a different setting: a museum that places his contemporary work in conversation with its own photographic collection.

The Musée des Arts Décoratifs is presenting a dedicated exhibition of the Brazilian photographer from 2 October 2026 to 2 May 2027. Its current programme describes more than 200 prints, bringing together the colour, texture and carefully constructed worlds that have made his images recognisable across fashion and popular culture.

Pavarotti was born in Pará in 1993. Northern Brazil is not a biographical footnote to his work. It is part of its visual grammar. The museum traces that grammar to the women in his family, the colours of his grandmother’s tableware and the natural surroundings of his childhood.

The Brazilian WAYFARER report follows the same line through magazine covers, fashion-house commissions and portraits of Rihanna, Harry Styles and Beyoncé. Different subjects share an insistence on colour and an unapologetic treatment of identity.

Beyond the fashion page

A photograph made for a cover has an immediate task. Within a museum, it can be held alongside other images and considered at a different pace. The Paris exhibition offers that change of scale: a career seen as a connected body of work rather than a sequence of individual commissions.

Iguatemi supported the exhibition. On 1 October, Pavarotti and Carlos Jereissati hosted a dinner at Solum, with a setting by La Mode en Images. The gathering brought together figures from fashion and culture, including Christian Louboutin, Katie Grand and Lauryn Hill.

The dinner belongs to the opening. The more lasting proposition is on the museum walls: a photographer whose visual world began in Brazil, and whose work need not surrender that origin to speak internationally.

WAYFARER editorial team.

Rafael Pavarotti, Photographer, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, 107 rue de Rivoli, Paris. 2 October 2026 to 2 May 2027. For visitor information, consult the museum’s official programme.

Editorial update, 6 October 2026: the museum lists more than 200 prints. This replaces the figure of 130 in the original Brazilian report. Ticket prices have not been reproduced.

From the WAYFARER Brazil archive. Originally published 2026-10-02; adapted and edited for the English edition on 6 October 2026. Read the original in Portuguese.