{"id":46401,"date":"2019-11-20T08:30:39","date_gmt":"2019-11-20T11:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistazum.com.br\/revista-zum-14\/everyday-life-on-the-hill\/"},"modified":"2022-06-01T14:21:58","modified_gmt":"2022-06-01T17:21:58","slug":"everyday-life-on-the-hill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistazum.com.br\/en\/revista-zum-14-2\/everyday-life-on-the-hill\/","title":{"rendered":"Everyday life on the hill"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Vila Mar\u00e7ola<\/em>, Aglomerado da Serra, 1986<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Afonso Pimenta’s portraits of the inhabitants of the Aglomerado da Serra community in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, taken in the 1980s fill a gap in the recent visual history of Brazil, a period when photography was still a privilege of the few. Now 64 years old, Afonso Adriano Pimenta has done a bit of everything. He has worked as a street sweeper, bricklayer, factory worker, nightclub doorman, and brothel guard, amongst other things. From the early 1980s he worked as a photographer, photographing celebrations and everyday scenes. Most of his work features the inhabitants of Aglomerado da Serra, one of the largest favelas <\/em>in Brazil, in Belo Horizonte. Aglomerado da Serra (literally, \u201cagglomeration on the hills\u201d) consists of a number of different neighborhoods sprawling over 1,5 thousand square kilometers with 50,000 inhabitants, according to the city authorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Afonso estimates that he has taken more than 300,000 photographs of the district, recording everything from children\u2019s birthday parties to Black music in dance halls and raves. Many of them have been lost over time. The rest, about 80,000 images, were stored unseen at his home until 2015, when he joined the project Retratistas do morro <\/em>[community portraitists], which was set up by the Minas Gerais visual artist and researcher Guilherme Cunha. Thanks to that project, Afonso\u2019s photography is now to be seen in exhibitions in Belo Horizonte and in various cities in the state of S\u00e3o Paulo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sinval na casa do fot\u00f3grafo<\/em>, bairro Serra, 1985<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Casamento da Assembl\u00e9ia de Deus<\/em>, Aglomerado da Serra, 1987<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

First contact<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1963 Afonso moved from the small town of S\u00e3o Pedro de Sua\u00e7u\u00ed in rural Minas Gerais to the big city. His parents were farm workers who had raised a family of sixteen of their own children and another four orphans. \u201cAs there were so many of us at home, my mother asked my godmother, who lived in Aglomerado da Serra, if she could look after me.\u201d On getting off the bus in Belo Horizonte aged nine, he was enchanted by the lights and bustle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At his godmother\u2019s house, though, he slept in a little backroom and had to work harder than in the countryside. One of his jobs was to prepare manure to sell in the wealthier parts of the neighborhood. With no piped water in the district, a problem faced by most of the neighbors, he had to go to the well three kilometers from the house. A small boy, he couldn\u2019t manage to carry a full can on his head, so he had to make the trip several times each day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Afonso first tried his hand at photography as a teenager. One of his fellow students at night school owned a Kodak Instamatic 11. The simple camera was coveted at a time when photography was a luxury. \u201cAnyone who had a camera was king,\u201d explains Afonso. \u201cOne day, the guy opened the back of the camera and showed me how the diaphragm worked, which I thought was amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Na casa do fot\u00f3grafo<\/em>, bairro Serra, 1987<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Afonso never managed to buy the camera from his colleague, however much he longed for it. At the time, he was making a living selling cardboard for recycling. A little later, in 1969, he started to work as a landscaper for the local council. He had his photograph taken for the first time when he was fourteen and needed the photo for his job applications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1971, when he had been promoted to street cleaner, he became friendly with Mrs In\u00eas, a neighbor in Aglomerado. \u201cShe was my second mother, she cared for me, gave me food and did my laundry.\u201d Concerned about the bad company the boy kept, the matriarch decided to recommend him as an assistant to her son, the photographer Jo\u00e3o Mendes, who remains the owner of the photographic studio Foto Mendes in the Serra, a middle-class neighborhood which gave its name to the Aglomerado, to this day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Belo Horizonte, 1988<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Lurdinha<\/em>, Pocinho, Aglomerado da Serra, 1987<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Comings and goings<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Afonso\u2019s eyes shone when he heard the word \u201cphotographer.\u201d He started by developing 3 \u00d7 4 identify photographs, the mainstay of Jo\u00e3o\u2019s small business. The boy had no experience whatsoever in photography \u2013 \u201cjust a lot of curiosity\u201d \u2013 but rapidly became interested in cameras and the chemical processes involved in developing. \u201cThe features would start appearing little by little, the first to emerge was the nose.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the shop was quiet, Afonso, who divided his time between his job as a street cleaner with his apprenticeship at the photographers\u2019, would study the cameras. He found out so much about them that he ended up being chosen by his boss to take photos on his own at a wedding in the suburbs of Belo Horizonte. With a 35mm hanging from his neck, he felt like a celebrity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Afonso was working with Jo\u00e3o when his restlessness and desire to improve his life set him on the road, in the company of one of his brothers. In 1976 he started working on infrastructure projects around Brazil. Amongst the projects he worked on were the Itaipu dam in Paran\u00e1 and the Angra 1 nuclear reactor on the coast of Rio de Janeiro state. As a contract worker for the big construction companies, he worked in Iraq, Angola and Kenya. In his spare time, he would write letters for his illiterate colleagues send to their families, photograph the workers with his own camera or offer to take them with other people\u2019s cameras.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Jo\u00e3o, Eva e sobrinho<\/em>, Aglomerado da Serra, 1987<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

He had another reason for his frequent trips. Having studied the martial arts since he was a teenager, Afonso started taking part in Shotokan karate competitions. He visited almost twenty countries to compete, including the USA, Mexico, and Ireland \u2013 where he ended up living for a few months. His athletic build and Afro hairstyle won him the nickname \u201cLion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Belo Horizonte, 1987<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Av\u00f3 e neto<\/em>, Vila Igrejinha, Aglomerado da Serra, 1987<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Enjoying life<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he tired of travelling, Afonso returned to Belo Horizonte and started working with Jo\u00e3o again. In total, they stayed together for more than a decade \u2013 from 1971 to 1982. As well as taking their 3 \u00d7 4 identity photos, Jo\u00e3o was hired by the inhabitants of the Aglomerado to photograph their baptisms, graduation ceremonies, and weddings. This work outside the studio was a godsend to Afonso, who, as time passed, started to find the routine studio work boring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the beginning of the 1980s, Jo\u00e3o opened a branch of Foto Mendes in Aglomerado da Serra and appointed his assistant as manager. That was when Misael Avelino dos Santos, one of a group which had set up R\u00e1dio Favela, a community radio station known as the \u201cVoice of the Hill\u201d because of its work supporting the inhabitants, came by the shop looking for someone to photograph the anniversary of one of the Black music parties, which the radio station advertised in the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Afonso took on the job without knowing that he was sealing his fate as a photographer. The Black music parties had taken off in Belo Horizonte in the early 1970s, attracting large numbers of young people from the poorer areas of the city. \u201cThere wasn\u2019t much for us to do, so those parties were our chance to have some fun,\u201d sums up the 52 year old artist and craftsman Ren\u00ed C\u00e2ndido da Silva, who lives in the Aglomerado.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Afonso started going regularly to the parties. One of them was a regular party on the street that gave access to the Aglomerado. Another was organized away from the favela<\/em>, at the PUC Minas Gerais Students\u2019 Union, between the Serra and Funcion\u00e1rios middleclass districts in the south of the city. The student militants opened the doors of the big hall to the public, mainly black and poor. Afonso also frequented the party Italiana, in the center of the city. Many couples got together at the events, dancing cheek to cheek by the end of the night. \u201cI ended up photographing some of their weddings,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Anivers\u00e1rio da Renata<\/em>, Aglomerado da Serra, 1986<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Despite their success, the parties, with music of stars such as James Brown and KC & the Sunshine Band on the dance floor, were fiercely repressed by the police. Brazil was living under the yoke of the military dictatorship and large gatherings were seen as a problem by the regime. \u201cAnd there was racism as well, which until today associates Black people with hooliganism,\u201d adds Misael. As in other cities, it was not uncommon for the police to raid the parties and arrest those present. For Misael, the brutality was responsible for emptying the parties, which began to go out of fashion at the end of the 1980s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Between 1984 and 1989, Afonso followed a routine: photographing the parties on Saturdays and Sundays, developing the films and, the following weekend, offering the 9 \u00d7 12cm portraits to the patrons. He rapidly added other parties to his routine. He estimates that he took more than 100,000 images during the five years, many of which have been lost. This was the way he started to live through photography and document a story: \u201cOurs, the story of the favelado<\/em>. And with great dignity for that matter,\u201d praises Misael.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, it was a story that has been little documented, and not only by photography, recalls the Minas Gerais filmmaker and researcher Joel Zito Ara\u00fajo. \u201cEven nowadays, the people that Afonso photographed are not seen as part of the ideal Brazil desired by our elite. On the contrary, they symbolize the poor, who should disappear from the map.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After growing up in Rio de Janeiro, Joel Zito lived his first years as an adult in Belo Horizonte, between 1975 and 1984. \u201cWhat the images show is the Black pride of poorer people whose idea of their own blackness came through mass culture, such as Michael Jackson\u2019s music or Blaxploitation movies and TV series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n