Stefania Bril: Embracing the Art of Gentle Rebellion

This article is derived from AQ’s exclusive report on anticipated developments in Latin America for 2025

On initial consideration, Stefania Bril’s images of São Paulo convey a raw social realism, slightly softened by clever humor. However, in one key photograph featured in a retrospective of her work currently displayed at the city’s Instituto Moreira Salles (IMS), the predominant feeling is one of tenderness.

“Boy reading comics in a supermarket cart” depicts a deserted street in the affluent Jardins area, barricaded by the concrete walls of private residences. A boy reclines with his body stretched from the sidewalk into a shopping cart that is overturned, its handle wedged where the curb meets the pavement. Relaxing in an makeshift lounging position, his form disrupts the vertical elements of the image (sidewalk, verge, street), a gentle rebel making the city his own.

Stefania Bril was born in Poland in 1922 to a Jewish family that evaded the Holocaust with assistance from a resistance group and forged identities. She relocated to Brazil in 1950, working in biochemistry laboratories until a course at the independent school Enfoco inspired her to devote herself completely to photography. Desobediência pelo afeto assembles 160 images from IMS’ collection of Bril’s works, alongside her critiques and contributions to the city’s cultural landscape. Nearly forgotten in the art scene since her passing in 1992, there is now an institutional effort to retrieve her insightful perspective on urban existence.

Early street photography, as was initiated by the Magnum

The agency concentrated on the extraordinary—war, crime, and spectacle. Conversely, Bril emphasized ordinary life: a Black mother in a headwrap guiding her children through a parking area, with one of them resisting her direction; shoeshine boys napping for a few minutes on a downtown sidewalk. In her critique, Bril posited that a female photographer can “immerse with greater enthusiasm and fervor into the realm of ‘minorities,’ aligning herself with them—the domain of children, women, the marginalized, and the elderly.” She infused these visuals with wit that often emerged in contrasts of words and deeds. In one image, beneath a sign that reads, “Don’t step on the grass,” a man in a suit slumbers face down, with only his feet protruding past the boundary of greenery.

If Bril serves as a recorder of the mundane, she also captures a broader narrative: a São Paulo ensnared in a tumultuous growth phase, under the watch of the country’s military regime amidst the promise of an “economic miracle.” Her snapshot of towering walls of “lettuce crates” at the State Center for Food Supply (CEASA), established in 1969, represents the infrastructure constructed for São Paulo: monumental, uniform, and fragile. Bril’s distinctive images are discovered at the intersections where the ordinary and the structural converge.

The aspiration that revealing the city’s unseen players might ignite structural social transformation became the central task for Bril’s Casa de Fotografia Fuji, a cultural hub she envisioned as a sanctuary for photography that “clarifies one’s vision, provoking insight.” For motivation, she drew upon the renowned New York City journalist and photographer Jacob Riis, whose “images changed legislation” during a period when words were perceived as ineffective. However, tensions between Bril and Fuji ultimately resulted in her departure two years after the center’s inauguration.

Present-day São Paulo continues to reflect many of the same characteristics as during Bril’s era—harshly unequal, shaken by sudden growth spurts, where individuals strive to establish their place amid expansive concrete landscapes. Since Bril’s time, the photographic medium has become dominant, obscuring rather than clarifying perception. Yet, this does not lessen the impact of Bril’s fondness. She writes: “São Paulo is an addiction. We criticize, lament, but still find joy in it. And despite the overwhelming auditory and visual bombardment of media, I still believe in a different simple and genuine ‘addiction’: a handshake, a touch of tenderness, a moment of connection.” 

Sciutto Rodríguez is a programmer and architect based in São Paulo

Tags: Art Exhibition, Brazil, Street photography, Visual art

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Americas Quarterly or its publishers.