Retratistas do Morro

The Retratistas do Morro collective aims to contribute to the construction of a narrative of the recent history of Brazilian images based on the understanding and recognition of the existence of the movement of photographers who lived and worked in the favelas, recording daily the ways of life of their communities over the years last 50 years.

It operates through a set of actions linked to the fields of image research, historicity, community experiences, preservation of oral and visual memory, conservation of photo archives and digital restoration, proposing reflections on the fundamental changes promoted by these photographs in current models of perception.

The project has focused on studying the archives of photographers João Mendes and Afonso Pimenta, presenting around 250,000 B&W and color negatives in 120mm, 35mm, ½ 35mm formats and monocles produced from the 1960 onwards, in the Aglomerado da Serra, located in the city from Belo Horizonte.

The initiative was created in 2015 by artist Guilherme Cunha and is composed of cultural producer Kelly Cristina, photographers João Mendes and Afonso Pimenta and Dona Ana Martins.

The collective was awarded the 30th Rodrigo Melo Franco de Andrade prize from IPHAN, Funarte Photographic Conservation Solange Zúñiga prize, selected by the Rumos Itaú Cultural and was published in national and international magazines, such as ZUM, Six Mois and Aperture.

Our main subjects of reflection are:

• Equal rights to exist
• Right to memory and history
• Social and symbolic inequality
• Heritage and symbolic apartheid
• Image, representation and identity

Born in the interior of Minas Gerais, Dona Ana lived in Governador Valadares before moving to the capital. She has lived in the favela Serra for 46 years, where she took root and carefully guards her collection of monocles. According to her: “it is a memory that I have, for my family, my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren, that they will see how we got here, how we lived here”.

Kelly Cristina is a mother and has lived in Aglomerado da Serra for over 30 years, with a high school degree. She has been actively operating through cultural actions to preserve the visual, oral and memory heritage in her community since 2011. She was a local producer of the photographic exhibition and the book Memórias da Vila, which received the XIII FUNARTE Marc Ferrez Photography Prize and is currently dedicated to the Retratistas do Morro project.

Born in Iapú, municipality of Inhapim, region of Caratinga, Minas Gerais, João Mendes worked in the fields with his parents since he was 8 years old. In 1963, he moved to Ipatinga with his family in search of a better life. After going through several jobs and selling popsicles from door to door, at the age of 15, João starts his career in photography. He was hired by the city’s chief of police to be the official photographer in the investigations cases. Between home and school duties, he photographed crime scenes and forensic cases.

On August 2, 1973, João Mendes established himself as one of the first professional photographers in the Serra community, in Belo Horizonte, where he has been working for 45 years. Despite this, his first images of the region date back to 1968. Since then, his shop, Foto Mendes, has been located in the same place and is still a reference today; four generations of residents of the neighborhood have already been photographed there.

The black and white photographs were taken between 1975 and 1979, with a medium format Yashica Mat camera, portraying residents of the Comunidade do Aglomerado da Serra. These images are 3×4 portraits for documents, mainly for identity cards, and postal photos sent by those who had migrated to the capital of Minas Gerais and had not been able to visit their hometown for a long time and sent them to distant relatives who remained in the countryside.

In João Mendes’ collection, can also be found a significant number of “gowns” and graduation photographs, in which children from Comunidade da Serra, students of the public school system, were photographed celebrating the passage of different school periods.

In 1970, newly arrived in Belo Horizonte, the young Afonso Adriano left the interior of São Pedro do Suaçuí to help his godmother with the expenses of the house in the Cafezal favela, one of the villages that form the Aglomerado da Serra Community.

Due to lack of employment, he spent a season collecting and selling manure until he was hired as a street sweeper by the city hall. Photography came into his life out of necessity. As an assistant to photographer João Mendes, while he washed the images that had already been developed, he learned his future profession.

His journey as a professional photographer began to consolidate when he started to photograph soul dances in Comunidade da Serra, at the invitation of Misael Avelino dos Santos, one of the founders of Favela Radio and organizer of the dances.

Throughout the 1980s, he accompanied the cultural movements of music and dance that brought the affirmation and strength of black cultural identity in BH. He photographed the dubbing competitions, the halls, the dancers and groups of friends, in addition to having lived very closely behind the scenes of the “Black” movement that was emerging in the periphery.

This was the moment when he worked the most with photography, the dances were a way of publicizing his name among the residents of the community. He then began to work, as he himself defines it, “in body to body” – going out to meet people and walking along the favela. For almost 40 years, he has been photographing the daily lives of residents and the social events that take place there, such as weddings, baptisms, birthdays, fifteen-year-old parties and funerals.

Guilherme Cunha
Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais – 1981

Guilherme Cunha was born in Belo Horizonte (MG), majored in fine arts at the Guignard School (UEMG (2004), and was a fellow at Pittsburg State University (KS / USA) in 2002. He is a visual artist, an independent researcher and an active cultural/creative developer in his community, working through different media such as drawing, video, photography, performance, cinema, sound objects, new technologies and installations. His poetic research, solidly based on scientific studies, proposes an in-depth investigation on the construction of perceptual models and platforms responsible for the production of knowledge that make up the social structure.

He took part at artistic residency Atelier #3 of Casa Tomada (SP/2010), JA.CA (BH/ 2014) and RedBull Station (SP/2014); received the exhibition grand award from Espaço Cultural Marcantônio Vilaça (2015) and the XIII FUNARTE Marc Ferrez Photography Award. He is one of the co-creators of FIF BH – International Photography Festival of Belo Horizonte (2013/2015/2017/2020). He was selected in 2017/18 for the Rumos Itaú Cultural. With his project “Retratistas do Morro”, received the award for Preservation of the Brazilian Cultural Patrimony of IPHAN, the 30th Rodrigo Mello Franco de Andrade Award and National Prize for Photographic Conservation Solange Zúñiga. guilhermecunha.art.br