Imprisoned Spaces
September 1 – October 1, 2005
It’s been a while since I started using architecture photographs as means of making comments about the people who live and dwell in these spaces. First I photographed the slums – “favelas” – of Rio de Janeiro attempting to show human dignity in spite of all difficulties faced by people who have no other choice but to live in these excluded communities. Most of the Brazilian middle class has never set foot inside a “favela”, and has no idea about the parallel universe that exists in such places. I photographed these constructions in the same manner as I would photograph a monument or a privileged home.
I first photographed Carandiru Penitentiary in 2002, invited by photographer/ videographer Maureen Bisiliat, as part of a long-term prison memory project. The prison complex was scheduled for demolition, due to age and the memories of revolts and a massacre of 111 inmates in 1992. I was able to go inside for only three days and a fourth after most of the demolition was executed.
Brazilian inmates call their cells “barracos” (barracks, tents, shacks) the same word used for their houses in the “favelas”, where most of them come from. As in my previous work, I tried to show their efforts to make their living quarters as dignified as their meager resources allowed for. In this prison inmates were allowed intimate visits twice a month and made all efforts to clean and decorate their cells prior to these encounters. The art work on walls and doors are reflections of order and chaos – creativity in adversity – and revealing of their desire for freedom, material residues of the only allowed forms of self-expression. It is sad to know that all vanished when the buildings were demolished.
I have shown my Carandiru images at Houston’s FotoFest 2004 Portfolio Reviews. The portfolio was very well received by curators Chris Rauschenberg (Blue Sky Gallery) and Juan Alberto Gavíria (Centro Colombo Americano).
The Carandiru photographs were reviewed by Chris Rauschenberg during Houston’s FotoFest 2004, and later exhibited at the Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, Oregon (September 2005). Because of the gallery’s dimensions I chose to use very large 50x60in/ 120/150cm prints and position them very close together in order to give the public a sense of confinement. Working in such a large scale proved to be complicated, but the impact of the final exhibition more then compensated for the difficulties.
Medellin’s Centro Colombo Americano showed the Carandiru prints in 2006. When Juan Alberto Gaviria, whom I have also met at FotoFest, and I started to work on ideas to get authorizations for me to photograph in Colombian prisons, offering a workshop for prisoners and students seemed like a natural alternative. As the project developed it got more and more ambitious, culminating in the exhibition of my photographs, the workshop and the ensuing exhibition of its results serving as a platform for broader discussions involving prison authorities, human rights activists, photographers, artists, students and the general public.
These images reflect the responsibility with which I use my work. They are not about crime, or criminals, but about human beings who found, or placed, themselves in extremely adverse situations and decided not to give up the struggle for a dignified existence.
Pedro Lobo
Borba, September 22, 2014
Pedro Lobo studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York. From 1978 to 1985 he worked as photographer and researcher for the National Center for Cultural Reference (CNRC), in Brazil, with Aloísio Magalhães, and for the Institute for National Historical and Artistic Heritage of Brazil (IPHAN), where he was responsible for the photographic documentation in the classification process by UNESCO of the cities of Olinda, Ouro Preto, Salvador, Santuário de Bom Jesus de Matosinhos and São Miguel das Missões as World Heritage sites. In his photographic series about Brazilian favelas (“Architecture of Survival”), and about the prisons of Carandiru and Medellin (“Imprisoned Spaces”), Pedro Lobo uses architecture photography to portray the human condition. He has participated in solo shows and group exhibitions in museums and galleries in Brazil, Portugal, the USA, Denmark, Germany, China and Colombia. His work can be seen in several museum and private collections. He is a CAPES-Fulbright scholar and has received the V Premio Marc Ferrez award, and the Vitae Photography scholarship. He now lives in Borba, Portugal, and works both in Europe and in Brazil.
