A auto-representação fotográfica em favelas: Olhares do Morro

Abstract

Photographs have taken an enormous importance in modern society. Usually, we register what we want to be viewed, but if we consider, for example, photographs of the population of the favelas, it is notice able that the most commonly presented image of the people, their environment and their daily life is not similar to the reality they perceive. They, thus, do not have any control on their image, as it is diffused by others. This image is associated, frequently, with representations spread by the media, which are always related to drug traffic and urban violence. For a few years, a great number of visual social projects, with the objective of valuing the regard of oneself and of establishing bonds between the various social layers in the different districts of the cities, have been developed, in Brazil. Among the innumerable projects, there are those that investin vocational training in photography for young favela inhabitants from Rio. The Olhares do Morro organization develops a work that aims at changing the representation of the favela, whose violence always takes the first place. Its main objective is to present another reality, in which their local daily lives and landscapes are recorded photographically by the young inhabitants. They set out to transform the external (and internal) view on the favelas, since photographs have the faculty of changing the perception which one builds of the other or of a place. This memory also analyzes the photographs taken by young photographers of Olhares do Morro as the image of themselves and of the place where they live that they want to transmit. It is, thus, a matter of considering their new trade - photography - a means of building another identity and of denying the social marks related to drugs and marginality.