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.

The Silent Bride

I walked into a wedding on the eastern periphery of São Paulo in Guianazes. Odd? A white mute man and his black mute wife communicated in sign language amongst their guests.

Here in Brazil, people don't make a big deal about race. Interrelations are as common as the sun. It's much more about class. Who you are.

She was a funny girl.
Good Luck.

King of Sampa

Alemão is homeless, over sixty years old and from what I can tell quite possibly schizophrenic. He lives under a tree on a overpass in an upper class neighborhood.

On every ocassion that I have visited him he talks to me of multi million robbery, fraud, extorsion, murder and rape that ocurred twenty years ago. In this crime, an American was killed. As far as I can understand this American, named David, got involved with a woman who betrayed him because she was actually the lover of a man in the Comando Vermelho criminal organization. Somewhere along the story the man was killed, for his money and the woman's daughter was also raped in the process. Somewhere else along the line a transvestite appears, as usual?

Alemão also says, the criminals are waiting for him to die so that his mother will inherit the loot, located in his bank account which he cannot access because he lacks proper ID but is to his mother;s name. So the criminals are actually after his mother. How old would she be now?

He may be mentally ill, but it fascinates me every time I visit him to hear this story and try to make sense of the pieces he offers me in bits. His story actually never changes which makes me ever more curious. Yet, what really fascinates me his will and power to survive, feed his dog and apparently look quite happy.

On the first photograph above he was describing to me a king that had lost his clothes and tried to sell them to him as authentic.