Meninas do rio - Ana Stewart

Meninas do Rio (Valongo Editora) brings together 19 girls from the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro in photographs taken ten years apart. Claudia Jaguaribe is responsible for the editorial coordination. A portrait in time. This is how Claudia Jaguaribe defines the photobook Meninas do Rio. 19 girls, chosen at random, from neighbourhoods in the north of Rio, were photographed for the first time between 2001 and 2006 and for the second time between 2011 and 2016, ten years later. In all the photos, Ana tried to include an element of the domestic scene, chosen together with them, either a corner of the house or a decorative element with some emotional charge. The result can be found in the photobook published by Valongo Editora, a special imprint of Estúdio Madalena, with the photos placed in pairs and separated by wax paper, representing the passage of a decade in time, and a page with the interviews conducted by the journalist Joaquim Ferreira dos Santos, with each one of them. “Ana’s work with the girls is very different, it is special. There is no social critique and the empathy between the two parties reaches the reader,” says Claudia Jaguaribe. To photograph, Ana Stewart set up a small set, without make-up artists, costume designers, hairdressers or producers, tasks that ended up being performed by family members, neighbours, couples or anyone else around. All the photographs were taken in the middle of a street, in a square, where Ana was passing by, except for four, which were indicated by acquaintances of the photographer. What they have in common is that they live in neighbourhoods in the northern part of Rio or in nearby municipalities. For the project, Ana used the Hasselblad camera of the 1960s model, the tripod, the continuous light, the Fresnel reflector and had the assistant Alexandre Savino at her side.
Meninas do Rio is the second photobook from Valongo, created by Estúdio Madalena, as part of a larger project by Iatã Cannabrava and Thamyres V. Matarozzi. The project includes Valongo’s International Image Festival, which occupied the streets of Santos in October, and will open a cultural centre in the same neighbourhood from January 2017.