Ten days after.

Santo Domingo

Dominican Republic.

From the lighter side of urban chaos I look out into the Atlantic from the Napolitano beachfront casino hotel. The sea is grey. Masses of plastic enrolled in seaweed lie are entrenched by the high tide coming in. It rains too, so I am peering out the UV tinted window.

Ten days ago crossing the border into Haiti, heading to Port au Prince, a city and a country too were still going into shock. Experiencing shock.

Paradaise City

When Axl Rose sang "Paradise City" referring to the grandness of Los Angeles: "Take me down to the Paradise City/ where the grass is green and the girls are pretty/ oh won't you please take me home!"  he was referring to the dream that was coming close to his very own grasp as he and his bandmates from Guns N' Roses roamed the clubs of LA in search of wealth and fame.

Surrounded by a large complex of gated upper class condominiums, know as the Morumbi neighborhood, some even with the luxury of a swimming pool per floor, lies a different paradise city, with population of over 100,000 residents, they call it the slum of Paraisopilis. The slum which surged in the 1950's to house the hundreds of northeastern immigrants who would begin the construction of one of Brazil's largest enterprises, the football stadium of Cicero Pompeu de Toledo, today known as Morumbi Stadium. These workers would eventually also begin the construction of the neighborhood of the same name, to suppress the already over saturated neighborhoods growing in the city.

As the economic and urban acceleration of the 1960's and 70's developed, the working class population living in the same areas was neglected and was surely expected to leave. Yet Paraisopolis, grew into a city within the city, marginalized but surrounded by opulence and the testament continues and with it so does the hunger.

The picture below belongs to the southern edge of the slum, where the poorest live in wooden shacks, plagued by a population of ten rats to every available cat, where a mother once killed a dog to feed her children and where I found these two children feeding off oranges in the garbage of the the adjacent building of the upper class.

Run

The Miohcão

Carandiru

View of the the remains of Carandiru prison on the right and the still existing women’s state penitentiary in Sao Paulo, on the left. On October 2, 1992 Sao Paulo’s military police erupted into the prison during a riot which became progressively harder to control. Over one hundred inmates had died before it was all over. One hundred and two of them were killed from gunshots wounds attributed to the Military Police another nine died from stab wounds. None of the police were killed. Survivors claimed the police had also fired on inmates who had surrendered or were hiding from the riot in their cells.

In 2002 the prison was finally demolished and developed into the park, Parque da Jueventude. Sao Paulo, with over 1,500 square kilometers and a population approaching 20 million has few recreational areas. The original plan for this park was actually never completed, due to a lack of fund.

The New Neighbors

In southern Sao Paulo, on 72,000 sq. meters, surrounded by an additional 52,000 sq meters of green areas, an all new integrated condominium complex is in it's final stages of construction with an investment of over USD $700 million. Parque Cidade Jardim, will hold nine residential towers, three commercial towers, an exclusive shopping center, a luxury spa, seventeen heliports and a mixed residential hotel tower linked to the Fasano chain. The apartments vary in size from 237 to 1800 sq. meters and are valued between USD $800,000 to $12,000,000. Sixty percent of them were sold before its inauguration in 2006.

The condominium looks over one of Brazil's most polluted rivers, the Tietê. The Panorama slum holding some forty families once stood in the same spot. Their shacks were bought out at USD $20,000.

Thank You Stern Magazine

Last year in September, Stern Magazine in Germany, assigned me to photograph the first day of school in Brazil. Soon after Carnival I arranged to photograph in the south of Sao Paulo, a very unknown part of the city for its abundant green areas yet very isolated and marginalized. I found a very poor family of four children with a single mother. The father due to alcoholism had abandoned the family.

The family lived in a wooden shack on private land. The landowner, had kindly allowed them to live there without rent. The children I photographed, pictured above with their mother are Daniel and Daniela, seven year-old twins on their way to their first day of primary school. The children must walk three kilometers to the bus stop and then drive another fifteen to an overcrowded public school.

The article was published in late August 2008 in Germany. The readers were moved by the tragedy of this family and voluntarily have begun a to set-up a fund to help them.

I just want to say, that this is what it's all about. This is why I take pictures. So I thank all the people who made this happen, Luis Viera at the social clinic who found the family, the two gentlemen who drove me around, the Instituto Socio Ambiental, Stern Magazine and of course it's readers.

Bomb Test

The wall in the background, divides the slum Jardim Elivana and separates the housing project, while protecting private land from being occupied. Three weeks ago, the body of a twenty-year old was found along this wall. Almost precisely where the two other children are walking along. Someone had tied a bomb around his waist and then blown him up. No one, really seems sure why they killed him in this manner, what they do know is that this boy was up to no good and got what was coming to him. Revenge? Justice? Murder? This is the life in the periphery. It used to be a lot worse I was told.

Out here it's best to keep the police out of it. Out here the laws are made at home.