The project “Retratistas do Morro” brings together images belonging to the recent history of Brazilian photography produced by photographers João Mendes and Afonso Pimenta, who have been working since the end of the 1960s, recording the daily lives of residents of the Comunidade do Aglomerado da Serra, the second largest favela in the country, located in the city of Belo Horizonte.
The community in which more than 70,000 people live is the result of the population and territorial expansion of smaller villages that emerged on the slopes of Serra do Curral, from 1914, still as a housing solution for many families who came from the interior to collaborate in the construction of the mining capital or looking for a job and had nowhere to live.
João and Afonso’s photographs reveal other versions of the history of metropolises and favela populations in Brazil, told from the experiences and world views of their own residents. They represent their life trajectories, struggles and achievements. In the midst of almost unpretentious photographic gestures, aimed at recording a family reality and its everyday movements, intimately accompanying the event of weddings, births, christenings, soccer games, wakes, graduations and dances, they built an unprecedented iconography, one of the few still preserved, in which it is possible to access changes in the social, political, economic and cultural scenarios occurred in Brazil’s favelas over the last nearly 50 years.
The work of these traditional portrait artists is entirely dedicated to what is important to the Other. Despite the formal characteristics, it is not a documentary work, but a biographical one. They work where they live. They are among their peers, friends and relatives.
Faced with symbolic inequality – or representation through visuality – as pronounced as social inequality, such as we know in our country, these photographers found space to record memories and affective experiences of populations that had their image made invisible for centuries. They present in their images a reality in which we all have the equal right to exist and express our subjectivities.
Guilherme Cunha, artist, creator, and producer of the project Retratistas do Morro.
Afonso Pimenta
São Pedro do Suaçuí, Minas Gerais, Brazil (1954)
In 1970, newly arrived in Belo Horizonte, young Afonso Adriano left the interior of São Pedro do Suaçuí to help his godmother with the expenses of the house in the coffee plantation favela. city hall. Photography came into his life out of necessity. As photographer João Mendes’ assistant, while washing the images already developed, he was learning his future a trade. His journey as a photographer begins to establish itself when he begins to record the community’s “soul” dances at the invitation of Misael Avelino dos Santos, one of the founders of Rádio Favela. Since 1980, he “earns his survival” with photography, recording dances, weddings, christenings, graduations and social events in the Serra Community.
The images of the photographer Afonso Pimenta, present the work he carried out during the 80’s, when he began to record the Black and Soul dances in Comunidade da Serra. During this period, he photographed the cultural movements of affirmation of music and dance that strengthened the identity of the black community in the city of Belo Horizonte, in the middle of the military dictatorship. At balls he recorded dubbing contests, singers, dancers and groups of friends; he closely followed the backstage of this movement. This was the moment when he worked the most with photography. The photographic coverage of the dances was a way of publicizing his name as a photographer among residents of the region. He then began to photograph the daily lives of community residents and the events that took place there, such as: weddings, baptisms, birthdays, house building, funerals, soccer games and so on. It was in this specific period that he established himself professionally in photography.
João Mendes
Iapú, Minas Gerais, Brazil (1951)
Born in Iapu, municipality of Inhapim, region of Caratinga, Minas Gerais, João Mendes worked in the fields with his parents since he was 8 years old. At 12 he moved to Ipatinga, in search of a new life. After going through several jobs at the age of 15, young João begins his career as a photographer. He was called upon by the Ipatinga police chief to work as a forensic photographer, portraying crime scenes and forensic cases. On August 2, 1973 João Mendes opens his shop, Foto Mendes, in the Serra neighborhood, in Belo Horizonte, where he has been working as a photographer for 50 years. Despite this, his first images of the region date back to the end of the 1960s. Foto Mendes is a reference in the territory and four generations of residents have already been photographed there.
Mendes’ black and white photographs were taken between 1960 and 1979, with a medium-format Yashica Mat camera, portraying residents of Comunidade da Serra.
These images were originally made for documents, mainly ID cards, and “postal photos”. The latter were used as souvenirs sent by post to distant relatives in the countryside. All the photographs in the series were produced in his studio/shop, Foto Mendes, located in Belo Horizonte. In João Mendes’ collection of images there is also a significant work of photographs of “gowns”, in which children from the community, students from public schools, are portrayed, to celebrate the successful passage of the school year. The last images are part of a very personal context, showing friends in the neighborhood, his sister’s wedding and the portrait of his father and mother, made by him when he was just 16 years old.
