Look at (after) your children, Brazil!

Out of focus, the child in the photo accurately depicts the situation of so many children working in the streets of Brazil’s biggest cities: the old boot stands out, in front and focused, while the child serves as the blurry background.

The photograph entitled” kicked childhood”, shot in the center of São Paulo by physicist Pedro Brandimarte, won first place in “Children of Brazil” photography competition, sponsored by the Institute for Development of Child and Adolescent Education, Culture and Sports (Idecace). He and 41 other competitors´ photographs were shown in São Paulo this August.

The traveling exhibition “Children of Brazil” moves in October to Recife and goes on to Salvador, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte and Porto Alegre.

“The photo speaks volumes of marginalized children living in the streets. Other people also noticed and commented on the symbolism of the blurred child“, says Brandimarte. He explained that he first got to know the reality of children 16-year old street children when he became a volunteer at the Association of Boys and Girls of Praça da Sé. “A child that lives on the streets is subject to a great deal of suffering. It is really terrible” said the doctoral student in nanotechnology at USP, who continues volunteering today as a physics teacher at the Educafro, an organization that offers prepatory courses for university entrance exams in poorer communities.

The contest received photos from various places throughout Brazil, all of which depicted children and adolescents in inhumane and inappropriate conditions, from big cities to the rural areas. A jury selected 15 pictures and asked online voters to determine 3 winners.

 
Children and young students from the public education system who visited the exhibition were encouraged to reflect on what they saw through various educational activities. Besides the competition and exhibition, the project “Children of Brazil - Disorder and Progress” included publishing a book, putting on a play, a film screening, and a series of lectures and debates.

According to the publicist Wilson Cardoso, President of Idecace and creator of the project, the objective of the project is to draw the attention of society and public authorities towards the issues of childhood and adolescence. “The idea of photography and video competitions was to produce a kind radiography of what occurs in each locality and therefore to work with localized information in order to find solutions for each problem. We show the public authorities positive experiences and suggest operational models, " Cardoso explains.

Cardoso adds that the public authorities do not know how to run projects. "The administration is precarious, they do not know how to account for themselves or how to establish a connection with society," he argues. In each of the exhibition’s locations throughout the year, the show stimulates discussions concerning the specific problems of that region.

In the Jequitinhonha Valley, in Minas Gerais, for example, one problem is the exploitation of child labor in agriculture. Placed second in the competition, a student of advertising, Paulo Henrique Lopes, borrowed a camera and photographed a boy from  the town of Divisópolis, at the border the states of Bahia and Minas Gerais (left).

The photo does not show that the boy has an oversized belly, caused by worms.
Despite warnings from Paulo Henrique and the other students who were there doing academic work, the boy’s mother disputed the diagnosis, insisting that the boy appeared bloated because he ingested too much water. Aware of this, the students asked municipal nurses to treat the young boy and other cases they became aware of in the region.

A Rondon program volunteer, (the program that maps national problems), Paulo Henrique explains that the title of his image, "Myth of the Cave", refers to the story in which the characters will not confront truths that cause pain.

"People see the children at risk and pretend that nothing is happening. They see it, it makes them feel sorry, but nobody acts. The buildings hide the true face of slums by planting plants and by using paintings. The child in my image represents all the other exploited in agriculture, sexual and other types of work, " he concludes.

Brazil is one of the countries with the highest child labor rate worldwide. The international union of work in Brazil estimates that nearly 4 million children and adolescents between the ages of five and sixteen work in Brazil, placing their physical, emotional and intellectual development in jeopardy.

Translated by Lucas Rosenthal and Nathaniel Wolfson

Read Further:

10 fotos competing for the Children of Brazil 

About the competition: (Portuguese) Concurso Filhos do Brasil