Gangland – Rio de Janeiro’s Urban Violence by João Pina (August 17, 2010) 
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Introduction by Sophia Greiff
From June 16th to June 20th 2010 the second Lumix Festival for Young Photojournalism took place in the city of Hannover. Along with lectures of renowned photographers, panel discussions and portfolio reviews, more than 1400 images were presented in sixty exhibitions. The majority of the displayed work impressed with its high photographic and narrative quality – and opened the eyes for individual tragedies and stories that would have been left unseen without the curiosity and sensitivity of these emerging photojournalists. A close insight into the favelas of Brazil’s second largest city was presented in João Pina’s photo essay Gangland – Rio de Janeiro’s Urban Violence. In one of the most violent cities in the world Pina looked at both sides of the story, documenting young drug dealers and gang leaders, as well as police units going about their work with an oftentimes indiscriminate force. His images reveal that in a place without laws everyone’s a victim: the boy with a weapon hung around his shoulder, playing tabletop soccer; the pregnant woman lying in an open coffin; the mourning bereaved of a police officer. In a straight and unbiased fashion Portuguese photographer João Pina shows a cruel reality in which it is nearly impossible to escape the violence.
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Our poll "A photo essay always needs a great written story" closed. 267 people voted, 28% agrees, 72% disagrees. 233 people answered our follow-up question "Are you a photographer?" 82% indicated they are, 18% said no. Initially, negative answers to question #1 were almost 100% as was the pecentage of photographers among respondants. Then, when the level of non-photographers started to rise, the percentage of people indicating good text is always essential started to rise too. This seems to indicate that non-photographers think that adding good text to your photo essays is essential. In my opinion: if you want non-photographers to dig your work, you know what to do...
I was riveted by João Carvalho Pina’s photographs of gangland Rio from the first moment I laid eyes on them. This series of extraordinarily intimate portraits give us an unflinching glimpse of Rio’s parallel realities – the favela and the asfalto – in all their raw humanity.
It is rare to see so deeply inside favelas like Morro do Dende, where we see a great deal, very closely: young gangsters with guns sharing a lighthearted moment over tabletop soccer; posing with their weapons, in a moment of bravado, alongside their very own priest – Pastor Sidney Aspino – who has made it his business to exorcise their demons, if not to save their souls; we see the gangster chief, Fernandinho, best known for decapitating people, resting at home on his bed, with his Jesus Christ tattoo and his exercise bike; we see women fainting in public in the religious, almost copulatory, ecstasy of an night’s exorcism at their local church.
And we see the terrifying fallout of this way of life: the adrenaline and fear experienced by policeman as they move through a neighborhood that is as much hostile territory to them as Taliban-controlled Afghanistan is to US troops; the pathetic little heaps that men’s murdered bodies become as they are retrieved from where they have been dumped at roadsides at night.
These images, black and white, often nocturnal, are a haunting journey through a reality that has become disturbingly permanent in Rio de Janeiro. They are endowed with an inherent classicism that evokes the fifties film set of Black Orpheus, and offer unsettling proof that a half century on, the same struggle between good and evil amidst unremitting poverty – and human beauty, too – continues unabated in the Marvellous City.
I had been wanting to find a way to write about Rio’s reality – so disquieting, so compelling – ever since my first visit there some twelve years ago, but it was not until I saw Pina’s images, however, that I felt I had found someone with a kindred eye. Pina himself struck me as a good companion and guide for a deeper exploration of the world that he had already begun to document. This eventually led to our assignment together in Rio de Janeiro this year, resulting in the New Yorker article, Gangland, that was illustrated by some of his exceptional images. Text by Jon Lee Anderson.
João Pina (1980) lives and works in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Click weblink joao-pina.com or browse our archives
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[...] Pina’s photo essay Gangland – Rio de Janeiro’s Urban Violence, shown in Bite! magazine is a remarkable document, showing the lives of the drug dealers and gang [...]
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by C. Cornell Evers, margootje. margootje said: An Unflinching Glimpse Of Rio’s Parallel Realities http://lnkd.in/6JXBBR [...]