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We are Cia de Foto, a photo collective from São Paulo,
which is the biggest city in Brazil.
São Paulo is a city of extremes,
the result of development that was never planned,
and it's a good example of all the social contrasts that exist in a South American country.
We work on the so-called Zona Oeste, or "west side,"
which is the productive center of the city.
Our studio is located at Pinheiros neighborhood,
an area known as an important business and commuting center in São Paulo.
I believe that we became artists at the moment we started to explore São Paulo as a subject,
and especially when we went deeper in researching the photographic medium.
Photography is an art form that reflects important aspects of the times we live [in],
and therefore it allows us to create visual interpretations of our own history.
To talk a little bit about collective,
as a collective, you can cope with the art in a more pro-social way.
Our days, our routine, becomes artistic as well.
By sharing our ideas, our environment becomes political, and creative,
and it makes ourselves better, what determines the work we do.
You believe in the process. That's the best part of everything.
The series Carnaval is...
these images, they were taken from the top of a trio elétrico, in Bahia, during the Carnaval.
Trio elétrico is a sound system, on a truck, that rides the streets, and people go after it.
Partying and celebrating.
So we were on the top, taking pictures of those people that were aside of the main street,
because they didn't pay to be in the best place.
This kind of party in Brazil is when people like to lose control a little bit.
It's almost something that ends a death,
something like that, it's the time that we can go out and party
and lose this control we try to impose to our lives daily.
Generally speaking we can say our work is divided in three steps.
One, is the conceptual research.
The second one, it would be the photo-shooting itself,
and the post-production.
We take a lot of pictures, and we usually archive it, to work on it afterwards.
In this process, it's common to forget the initial intention of the photographic act.
We create new narratives according to what we are discussing
in each of the pieces that we are working on.
To emphasize this narrative, we often, we tend to add new textures,
add grains, changing saturation, density,
and it's definitely when our work of art comes out.
Talking about our work in a global context, you can say Brazil is definitely a photographic country.
Its polarity in means, and sense, gives us an extreme photographic atmosphere.
We live in a very intense and unequal place.
It's quite unique, and it reflects, it's reflected in our work.
But it's not because we are living in a place that somehow failed in its project that we have nothing to say.
It's the opposite; we have a lot to say.
Brazilian people are very easy-going, I believe, and we learned how to deal with these difficulties
and how to turn it in[to] something expressive, I believe.
And I think that, from the fact we are,
from being a collective, and being artistic as photographers,
is somehow the political way we found to live here, in this place.