ANOTHER CITY

"If a place can be defined
as identity, relational and historical,
a space that can not be defined either as
identity as relational or,
or as historical define a non-place ".
Marc Auge

French ethnologist. Marc Auge is research coordinator at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS),1985 and 1995. Auge created an important concept for the Sociology non-place. The non-place is diametrically opposed to home, residence, the personalized space.

Another city is the name of a set of images from the periphery of several Latin American metropolises. These cities have many layers developed over the centuries since its foundation. Litters of daily lutas, social movements, silences of nights, political intrigue, Finally countless layers of memories that make up amazing stories. The space of the city of São Paulo is a palimpsest indecipherable, because it exploded and burst all possible contradictions, like a cauldron in an eternal burning fire. But São Paulo, like Bethlehem, Lime, Caracas, La Paz, is merely a repetition of a generator matrix of these contradictions. Iatã Cannabrava knows these cities and this essay, developed over more than eight years, turned his camera to the same neighborhoods, different cities, and conducted a project document with a different expressive power. Really, the name of the test you want to talk about a periphery, that synthesizes all suburbs. As the periphery of postmodernity, was a kind of non-place in reverse. Similar spaces in various cities and countries far, everything seems much like. For these photos organized around the idea of ​​Another City, is in fact the image of the periphery of any city, occupied by minorities that build economic space as a DIY - part of the constituent elements are common, which gives the similarity and close to the idea of ​​being the same place. In other words, a non-place upside down because the inhabitant of the periphery has its displacement authorized and recognized by the community. Iatã used color photography to accentuate the different layers that comprise the broad spectrum of social exclusion limits. His essay records a recognizable social microcosm that concentrates other layers dissonant and reverberate synchronously with other existing layers in the urban core. There would be some logic in this established disorder? In other words, in São Paulo, one of the richest in the world and like any big city in Latin America, we have a peculiar situation between accumulation and poverty. The city throughout its history has expanded so chaotic and peripheral spaces, invisible to the public power, were created randomly. It is precisely in these peripheries that Iatã fixed his gaze and developed an essay on the differences. The photographs and the scare by visualities building strategies used to record and document this world is not always visible to the eyes of all. The pictures make up an essay focused on visual anthropology, makes us think about the precarious living conditions of large cities and the question of the occupation of the public domain. At the same time, Iatã records the accumulation of different materials and different forms that organize unpredictably, this DC voltage space, to explain the popular ways to hide and show evidence. Be in the general plans and panoramic, whether in domestic interiors and even in pictures, what we see is the result of a gaze that seeks to build a plurality of fragments that show more than an explosion of colors and formas.Assim as the city's history, the photograph of Iatã Cannabrava is a kind of palimpsest contemporary. In each photograph can verify the presence of the different layers covering the recorded area. In some of the pictures is noticeable layers elected by the sensitive eye that seeks to contextualize the citizens in that environment. Hence it is possible to understand the posters that illustrate partially spaces, graffiti drawn on the walls and the many signs that advertise anything. The result is a picture that bothers also by straightforwardness and boldness to incorporate these indices and significance to them. Grades, cages, Pregnant. The inside and the outside. The detail and the widescreen. A photograph inventive, created crevices as possible, establishing a plural universe signic, through a framework tense, because when square, seems asymmetrical, and when rectangular or panoramic, predominant composition noisy. Ultimately, gritty work that reflects the weaknesses of our socio-economic system through silent images that form a highly explosive and political density and aesthetics.

Rubens Fernandes Junior,
Researcher and Critical Photography