Imagesandimaginariesofthesuburbs

Image description: This is a black-and-white photograph of a rural road. On the left, there is a line of trees and dense vegetation. In the center, the road is wide and straight, with a dirt and stone path. On the right, there is an isolated house, surrounded by bushes and plants. Further in the background, other buildings and a line of trees can be seen. The sky is clear, indicating a sunny day.

Around 1918, Augusto Malta — one of the most notable photographers to document Rio de Janeiro in the early decades of the 20th century — aimed and took a shot of a road in Pavuna. It's true that the photo would hardly make it into an exhibition of Malta's most beautiful images. After all, it shows nothing but a deserted dirt road, flanked on one side by tram tracks and on the other by nothing but tall brush and a few small houses in the background. But this photograph says more than it might seem.

What might have caught Malta's attention and led him to photograph that apparent nothingness? Perhaps the shot can be explained precisely by the way that "emptiness" contrasted with the great (supposedly) civilizing fuss that the government had been stirring up on the "other side" of the city since the early 1900s — transformations that Malta himself documented with skill and intimacy. Thus, the imagination surrounding the suburbs was, historically, built from the angle of what is precarious, outdated, lacking.

Almost forty years after Augusto Malta's photo, the same region appeared featured in a report by Correio da Manhã. Below the headline "Pavuna cries out against the authorities' negligence" a photograph showed the mudhole that this population regularly lived with. Just a trivial example among countless images that ended up building the collective imagination about the suburb as a place of neglect. Filth, unhealthiness, violence, the opposite of progress: this was how suburban life appeared to the eyes of the sectors that held the media resources to convey these images.

Image description: This is a photograph of a religious building, likely a church, with a central tower. The tower has an opening at the top with a bell visible inside it. To the left and right of the tower, there are two human statues. The building is surrounded by other structures, with a classical architectural style. The image is overlaid with a purple filter, making the details less sharp.

This dispute in the field of imagery over the affective perception of Rio's suburban universe has been changing in recent decades. While the suburbs of Rio have traditionally been represented under the stigma of absence, this stigma never did justice to the imagistic-affective mosaic that makes up suburban life — multiple, full of sentimental minutiae, of the ordinary, of the spontaneous. In this duel waged in the field of ideas, there is an increasing search for a necessary resignification of this way of seeing and representing this sensitive geography. And the ones who have been gaining ground in this process of building imaginaries are the very people who inhabit the suburbs.

The work of contemporary photographers, such as Roberta Domingos and Bruno Veiga, exemplifies the importance of presenting this suburb in a way that runs counter to what had been hegemonic for decades. Material hardships cease to be the sole angle, giving way to a poetry of the everyday: a kite in the sky, bars with plastic tables, chairs on the sidewalk, architectural elements such as cobogós and iron grilles, syncretic religious festivities (Saint George, Saint Sebastian, and Saints Cosmas and Damian), bate-bolas on dirt fields and paved public courts, samba culture, the street as an element asserting ways of life: a space of devotion and celebration of encounters.

Image description: This is a black and white photograph of five children playing soccer in a courtyard. On the left side, a boy runs with the ball, while the other four watch. In the background, there is a brick wall and some simple houses. On the right, an electric light pole and a cell phone antenna are visible. The sky is partly cloudy, with some rays of sunlight lighting up the courtyard.

Exhibitions, publications, workshops, and other events have spread the practice of photography of, in, and for the suburbs. And beyond the technical qualities of a photographic record, what really matters is the piece of life represented there. After all, the production of a self-image is an essential condition for the construction of social identities and, consequently, for the full exercise of citizenship.

Image description: This is a photograph of a street in a suburb. On the left side, we see a large tree and a pole with many electrical wires hanging from it. In front, there are two elderly people sitting in plastic chairs, with their backs to the camera. In front of them is an old, dirty mattress. In the background, there are colorful houses, including a pink one and a yellow one with geometric patterns. There are cars parked along the street and more trees in the background. The sky is clear and blue.