Caio Reisewitz

I had the opportunity to view Caio Reisewitz first solo exhibition at the CCBB during my past visit to Rio. I remember being easier intrigued and influence by the natural beauty that his photographers share with the viewer. The photograph above was probably by far on of my favorites of the exhibition. The color is just so intense and rich. He had many other images of inside architectural spaces that played a lot with light and shadow.

The photography that intrigued me, by far the most, was what simply appeared to be a shot of the forest or jungle. It was a luscious green that soaked in the color and made it feel like I was there. With further examination you begin to notice that what first appears to be a place furthest away from civilization, you notice favelas hidden among the foresta. I decided to look into a bit more of his work and found out he is a native of São Paulo and photographs many of his images within its limits. I personally did not witness or experience much of any encounters with nature while in São Paulo. It is a HUGE city, home to over 11 million people. It is nice to know areas like this do exist there and I like the juxaposition of these two different environments of the natural and processed together. When I saw that photograph, I had an "ah ha!" moment and began to think about this idea in other forms. In some ways I think it was the inspiration behind my latest idea for a piece.

NPR

Since I have begun my normal, everyday office job I have started listening to npr to make the time go by faster. I decided to search to see what news they had gathered about Rio with the Olympics and problems with the favelas since it seems to have caused a lot of attention in the media in the last few months. Some of these issues that are discussed, I have been thinking a lot about myself. (Posts to come! I promise!) It's amazing how many conversations I had with people about favelas either by other gringos who were interested in seeing this place (which I fear often times is because of the movie City of God..I in fact had a few people reference it, while we were speaking! Come on! Really! It's a movie! Don't justify your reasonings based off of this!) or by those who lived in other parts of Rio. I myself, began to volunteer in a favela but for a short time.I was jumping around too much, traveling to other places. I think not long enough to really be able to share many thoughts but at least a few. I think it is extremely important to note, each favela is different and some are more dangerous than others. Either way, I wanted to just post some of these news reports that I recently listened to..both positive and negative.