At the time of its construction and inauguration, the city of Brasilia attracted numerous photographers, architects, filmmakers and curious visitors willing to portray or see the new capital that was being raised from the ground amid the euphoria of the so-called “golden years” of Brazil. The fascination created by Oscar Niemeyer’s architecture especially attracted the eyes of foreign photographers as Marcel Gautherot (1910-1996) and Peter Scheier (1908-1979), but what caught the attention of the Hungarian artist living in Brazil, Thomaz Farkas, was the people. It is his gazing at the people, the suburbs, the candangos (workers) at a time when the attention was concentrated on the city’s architecture, that makes of Thomas Farkas a subversive artist. “With empathy and beauty, he celebrates and makes life a protagonist in his work without being pamphleteer or sensationalist”. This is how Eder Chiodetto, curator of the show at MIS – Museum of Image and Sound – that stayed open until October 21st, explains the use of the terms “subversive and elegant” in the brochure for the show. The book collection Ipsis, which is totally dedicated to documental works of photography, gathers in the issue dedicated to Farkas two of the greatest achievements of the artist in two beautiful series. The first series, created between 1958 and 1960, shows two distinct moments of Brasilia: its construction and its inauguration. But there is more to it: it brings to light the social fabric that while constructed and worked in the city, was systematically excluded from it, being relegated to distant suburbs and satellite towns. The second series, made by Farkas at an advanced age, between 1998 and 2000, was commissioned for the O Correio Braziliense newspaper in Brasilia and remained practically unprecedented. However, if one compares the latter with the former series, 40 years older, the differences are virtually indistinguishable. Both series depict the daily lives of the most destitute people with the same depth and sensitivity. The architecture itself is always depicted with people nearby, highlights Chiodetto. The tone of criticism is very clear. Few differences are seen in the lives of the poorest that are excluded from the city imagined by Niemeyer and, as Farkas denounces in his work, the lives of these few ones changed very little along the four decades that separate one photo essay from the other.
With an arsenal of previously unpublished photographs, the book in the Ipsis Collection pays homage not only to a photographer who has a high aesthetic quality, but also an important social concern that brings out the human dimension of city that was designed to hide it.
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