João Linneu - JJ VFF VV

Void 2026

This diaristic record of pregnancy complications is set against Linneu’s static and unforgiving landscape photographs of the city of São Paulo, where he and his partner found themselves having to live and put their life on pause in the months prior to the birth of their child. Austere monoliths and brutal blind façades linger, towering over their intimate lives to become physical extensions of the stillness and inertia imposed upon them. Stillness suffuses Linneu’s imagery. Intertwined with his honest documentation of a painful pregnancy – obscured scans, a shape-shifting body, toilet basins stained with blood – are portraits of his partner lying in bed. Shot on a single day and appearing chronologically throughout the book, the bed – at times absent when Fajardo is hospitalised – holds the passage of time, and the weight of pain and uncertainty shared.

Resisting the constraints of a paediatric intensive care unit where photography was prohibited, ‘JJ VFF VV’ becomes a marker of representation, offering a visual counterpoint to idealised narratives of childbirth. Discovering beauty in the pain they have shared, Linneu and his family create a refreshingly unique portrayal of the emergence of a family unit, and demonstrate the layers of vulnerability that encompass bringing new life into the world.