Tudo Bom 2022 #49 by Alex Majoli

#SCENE9903 BRAZIL. 2022. São Paulo. Police operation in Rua Augusta.

The repossession was carried out on the morning of Tuesday 17 2022, one day before the forecast of one of the coldest days of the year. In total, nine vehicles from the São Paulo Military Police (PM-SP) and three from the Shock Battalion were mobilized to evict 100 families – about 300 people, 79 of them children. The site was occupied by the Frente de Luta por Moradia (FLM) on April 1 of this year, as part of the FLM Women’s Struggle Day, with the agenda “No woman without a home”.

“We are trying to go to a relative or friend’s house, someone who can take in”, says Roseli, who, despite being employed, earns only the minimum wage. “We can’t eat and pay rent. You can’t do both for those who earn a minimum wage”, she adds. She still has a chronic illness, which generates more expenses.

Percentage of the photo goes to FLM.

Throughout my career as a documentary photographer, I have experimented with multidisciplinary approaches to add novel layers of analysis to traditional documentary photography. My artistic practice has primarily been driven by the theories of innovative intellectuals representing the fields of psychology, neuroscience, literature, and, increasingly with time, by the art of theater, with a focus on Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author. In particular, this is what triggered me to undertake further research on the theater of everyday life. I realized that we all play a part. We wear masks that accommodate fixed societal roles, and in that way, we exist trapped in our own play—here we are, relentlessly acting ourselves. A key to understanding our complex reality, then, could be to acknowledge and question the meaning of the theatrical elements that have constructed its play, our core societal narrative.

Contributing a continuation to the Brazilian body of work included in TUDO BOM, the photographs will retain the DNA of photojournalism—in the strict sense of providing content regarding the current events, but will bring into play an aesthetic that highlights what roles the various characters in this crucial chapter of contemporary history have been assigned, and how they are building particular narratives that shape different groups’ understanding of the issue.

Edition: 1 of 1

Commissioned by Obscura