A Brazilian photographer asks questions · Global Voices

Some of the chosen photographers on the go to to the Monte Azul Favela Alley. Photo by Marlon Marinho, used with permission.

This article, written by Léu Britto, was initially published on Agência Mural’s website on May 25, 2025. An edited model is republished right here by Global Voices below a partnership settlement.

Amid heated debates in regards to the development of synthetic intelligence (AI) and its doable affect on the artwork market, a query arises: will expertise and creativity nonetheless have a spot in pictures from city peripheral areas? These doubts adopted me within the days main as much as May 10, when three different pictures fanatics and I promoted one other edition of FotoBeco (Alley Photos), an exhibition that includes pictures produced by photographers from São Paulo’s peripheral neighbourhoods.

Every two months, Rogério Vieira, my associate at Sérgio Silva Gallery, and I choose to current a photographic sequence in an alley positioned on the best way out of the Monte Azul Favela, in southern São Paulo. It is a free, public exhibition of the chosen artists’ work.

Each artist wins a free print of their work on a canvas of 4 × 2 metres, displaying a synopsis of the piece to members of the general public passing by.

We additionally launched the fan journal “BECO-Volume 1,” in partnership with the writer Selo Vertigem, which introduced collectively 30 pictures from individuals who consider within the significance of our mission for pictures, resisting the market’s modus operandi and its hierarchical business construction.

Streets and alleys

My story with pictures has two main milestones. The first was in 2007, once I left highschool, torn between finding out mechanical engineering and journalism. The selection got here after photographing, albeit as an beginner, an occasion often known as the State Meeting of the Homeless of São Paulo State.

There, the president of the occasion, Robson Mendonça, confirmed me part of the inhabitants dealing with a state of affairs as troublesome as that of life within the favelas — those that didn’t also have a roof over their heads. After that assembly, I made a decision to combat towards the additional erasure of marginalized folks, of whom I’m a component.

A father and son ponder items from São Paulo’s peripheral neighbourhoods in Monte Azul Favela Alley. Photo by Marlon Marinho, used with permission.

The second milestone got here a number of years later, in 2013, after faculty, with the Women’s Popular Union from Campo Limpo and Surrounding Areas. This establishment supported cultural initiatives and the combat for human rights together with the Solano Trindade Popular Agency of Culture, with which I work to today. That’s how I purchased my first skilled digital camera, a second-hand one, which might stick with me for seven years.

And my journey into pictures became a resistance towards the erasure of the thought of how we, as residents of the peripheries, think about what we’re, how we dwell, and what we consider this unequal world, since our streets and alleys. Be it towards the omission of the state or of artwork that does not like to focus on the truth we endure, or the shortage of doorways open to us within the bubbles of already established artwork markets.

In the business artwork market, it appears assured that we gained’t even set foot there, until it’s by way of the 1 % quota reserved for Black folks, the impoverished, and favela residents.

A market made in Brazil

In Brazil, pictures is probably not seen as one thing for folks from poorer neighbourhoods, however we proceed making and sharing it anyway. This level resonates with the truth of the Brazilian pictures market, the place, when a portfolio is analyzed, the origin of the photographer and their tutorial background usually appear to hold extra weight than the work itself.

Between 2021 and 2023, I used to be managed by a curator who tried to incorporate me available in the market. One day, a consumer of hers who was shopping for some pictures noticed a photograph from my 2021 guide “A Gambiologia da Sevirologia” [The Art of Getting By]. At first, he went straight previous it and didn’t take any curiosity, however his spouse referred to as him again to it: “Wait, this one is different, I’ve never seen anything like it in your collection, it’s worth acquiring,” she stated.

He requested the curator, “How much is it?” She answered, “BRL 1,000” (round 185 US {dollars}). He replied, “But who is he? Does he have a CV?” She stated: “He has 10 years’ experience; he’s an exponent [of photography] and he has a promising future.” The consumer stated, “As I don’t know him, I’ll pay BRL 500 for two images.” That similar day, he was negotiating the acquisition of a sequence of six pictures by a North American photographer who labored with the folks of Peru, and was going to pay 50,000 US {dollars} for them.

Does this method take into account illustration, the breaking of stereotypes, and the facility of [including] views from the peripheries in pictures? I bear in mind the phrases of Maria Luiza Meneses, an artwork curator, who wrote the preface to our zine. “These are photographs that widen the ways of seeing São Paulo’s peripheries, [which are] equally important for the transformation of the collective imaginary.”

A Black skilled, she reiterates how this pictures can itself be a device for altering others’ and artwork markets’ perceptions of those areas.

Those who make this bridge between realities are the brand new photographers whose pictures come from a typical start line: their very own expression of the truth lived inside peripheral neighbourhoods, throughout the nation.

We not want “colonizers” to return and document our day by day lives; it has been a while since now we have been in a position to do it ourselves. And our native folks acknowledge our efforts by way of the breaking down of cliches about ourselves.

Photo by Léu Britto, one of many creators of FotoBeco, taken within the district of Rio Pequeno. Agência Mural, used with permission

The combat towards stereotypes

With every version of FotoBeco, since December 2023, our dedication has strengthened: we present what we document,within the combat towards adverse stereotypes about our neighbourhoods — favelas, peripheries, and marginalized locations — one thing nonetheless unvalued by the market.

Works that spotlight the violence towards Black our bodies, exalt magnificence within the midst of chaos, [show] the unique, are nonetheless frequent representations of poverty, and what typically interprets into saleable artwork.

When we’re amongst them, once they permit us to be there, typically, we trigger fright, strangeness, a sure unease. Our origin doesn’t permit creativity and artwork, solely destruction and tragedy, based on the “validators” [of art]. It’s that clichéd method of taking a look at us: “Wow, how talented you are, in the middle of nothing,” Or “It was your individual effort that enhanced your look.”

This May 2025, even with the rain, over 50 folks got here to understand the works we chosen from 200 purposes. “The number, perspectives and diversity of images received are an indication of the place that the peripheries occupy in contemporary photographic interest,” Meneses concluded.

I used to be sure of this as I walked towards the alley. And I wasn’t alone.

“I’m from Taboão da Serra (in São Paulo) and I remember well when I just had a desire to take photographs. I hardly knew the profession; I had no references from people from my neighbourhood who had managed to get there. It seemed out of reach,” stated Tuane Fernandes, one other member of the choosing panel.

For the established market, most photographers originating within the poorer neighbourhoods, like us, are nonetheless disorganized newcomers who do not likely know what we try to specific. And then now we have the verse from Racionais, one among Brazil’s most vital rap teams: “Us here, you there, everybody in their place. Got it?”

My feeling is that this market is just now adapting to our era, which has come up, certified, and delivers what they suppose we must always produce. Only we’re going additional; we’re bored with ready. We are getting ourselves on the market, as we are saying. Creating our networks, opening galleries, doing our festivals, constructing our collections, and setting the costs of our personal artworks.

The actuality is there’s no extra ready for the solar to rise. When they are saying it’s daytime, we’re already up properly earlier than [that]. We are the era that eats contemporary fruit as a result of we get up earlier.