Rio de Janeiro – Rio de Janeiro’s teeming slums, or “favelas,” which the world knows mostly from news images showing the misery and violence there, can now be seen in a different light through the lenses of photographers from the neighborhoods themselves.
The exhibition entitled “Olhares do Morro” (Visions from the Hill) opens to the public on Tuesday in the city’s Telemar Cultural Center and includes 150 images by 16 photographers of three slum neighborhoods, as well as individual photo essay exhibits by three young “favela correspondents.”
The exhibition was organized by the Olhares do Morro Agency, a non-governmental organization created in 2002 which has helped about 50 Rio favela residents gain access to the previously distant world of photography.
“The exposition allows us to show that art and culture also exist in the favelas,” 24-year-old Ricardo de Sousa, one of the three persons whose work is contained in an individual exhibit, told EFE.
De Sousa took advantage of the opportunity to shoot a photo essay on the culture of transvestites in Rocinha, considered to be Brazil’s poorest neighborhood.
The exposition includes, among other things, images of young lovers, the bohemian life in portions of the favelas, the Rio tourist spots as seen from the favelas, the residents’ passion for soccer and Carnival celebrations that one doesn’t see in the Sambodromo, famous for its glitzy events.
According to the U.N. Center for Human Settlements, or Habitat, at least 4 million of Rio’s 13 million residents live in the favelas.
These people live in the areas forgotten by the state, in which criminal gangs vie – often employing brutal violence – for control of the drug trade.
“The violence is perpetrated by barely 1 percent of the residents of the favelas, but it makes up 99 percent of what the media reports,” French photographer Vincent Rosenblatt, who founded the Olhares do Morro Agency, told EFE.
