Mauro Antonio Barreto has presented his work in solo exhibitions at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, Spellerberg Projects (Lockhart, TX), Central Texas College (Killeen, TX), and the San Angelo Museum of Fine Art (San Angelo, TX.) He earned a BA in art from Yale University and an MFA in photography from the University of Hartford, and is currently an Adjunct Professor at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, TN. Barreto lives and works in Nashville, TN.

My current work consists of large-scale, black and white portraits of young people. Barreto is interested in playfully confusing the notions of subject and photographer, the scene and the behind-the-scenes, realism and self-consciousness, coolness and affect, as well as past and present.

Far from the luxury condos and tasting menus of America's hip cities, this work takes humble backyards, public parks, and alleys as its setting. The photographs, based in our world, but fictive in nature, contain undertones of the angst and ennui felt by a generation of young people to whom many promises were made, but few were kept.