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.