The community of Kalunga: Photographer portrays everyday black life

The community of Kalunga: Photographer portrays everyday black life

Note from BW of Brazil: Have you ever sat and wondered at the power of a photo? Sometimes I can pick up a collection of photos in book form and never even miss that the book features so few words. A photo or a series of photos can sometimes tell a whole story, and even if you don’t actually even know for sure what the scenario of any given photo might be, looking at the photo allows you to imagine what the image’s background might be.

There are a number of photos on this very blog in which I can very much feel exactly what’s going in a particular photo. And then there are other pix in which I wonder and wish I could know what a person in thinking in the exact moment that in which it was taken. Take for example the photo taken of the black boy on the beach on New Year’s Eve in Rio. Or the photo of one of  Cláudia Ferreira da Silva’s children overcome with pain at her funeral. Or the photo of the brother perched atop what appeared to be some garbage bins at the sanitation workers strike in Rio. There’s simply too many to chose from just from this blog alone.

In the photos captured in today’s post, a few samples of the everyday life of a quilombo community speak volumes for the people featured in them that we know little to nothing about. After looking at the stills for a few moments, two thoughts come to my mind immediately: black people surviving and…how much does this book cost?

Photographer portrays daily life in the community of Kalunga, in Goiás in a book

In SerTão Kalunga, André Dib portrays the community with more than five thousand inhabitants, precisely hidden in the northeast region of Goiás

Courtesy of Correio Braziliense

The presentation of the book says that the work is fundamental for those who seek to critically understand the struggle and the trajectory of blacks

The presentation of the book says that the work is fundamental for those who seek to  critically understand the struggle and trajectory of blacks

“Minute work, done with the passion of those who have traveled great distances with a steady and discreet step, saw people and embossments, heard legends and myths no less enthralling.” This is how the photographer André Dib opens the photo book SerTão Kalunga, which deals with the documentation of the largest quilombo in the country.

The book was launched through the Fund of Art and Culture (FAC) of the state of Goiás. In it is portrayed the community of the country with more than five thousand inhabitants, precisely hidden in the northeast region of Goiás, where the municipalities of Cavalcante, Monte Alegre and Teresina de Goiás are located, in an extension of two hundred and fifty three thousand hectares.

Dib also shows through his camera the culture and forms invented by them to survive in the midst of drought and other climatic phenomena. The presentation of the book says that the work is fundamental for those who seek to understand critically the struggle and the trajectory of blacks or afrodescendentes (African descendants) as historical subjects and essential for the formation of the national society and identity will have authentic representatives of the Kalunga people.

Source: Correio Braziliense