Homeless people given chance to take pictures of São Paulo

With cameras in their hands and plenty of insight as São Paulo locals familiar with the city alleys, a hundred homeless people strolled for two days capturing pictures of the city. It’s all part of a project called My Greater São Paulo – The Look of the City (Minha Grande São Paulo – O Olhar da Cidade), held by the local Human Rights Secretariat. The best 20 pictures were exhibited, and 13 were chosen for use in a calendar called My São Paulo, launched Saturday (Dec. 12) as part of the Human Rights Festival.

Rafael Alves, Assistant Coordinator for Homeless Policies, said the awarded street dwellers attend community centers and arts workshops, and were each given a 27-exposure camera. Upon return of their cameras, they were paid R$10-R$100 ($2.60-$26) for each shortlisted picture. A total 2,360 pictures were taken. Part of the proceeds from the calendar sale will be paid to the photographers, and another portion will be allocated to a fund for arts and culture projects targeted at the homeless.

The project is part of the With One Voice initiative – a network of homeless projects in several countries – in collaboration with such non-governmental organizations as the UK’s People's Palace Projects and Streetwise Opera, as well as the British Council and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Similar projects have taken place in Vancouver and London.

“It’s interesting that in those two cities, the average number of cameras that were returned was 80; in São Paulo, 92 cameras have been returned,” Rafael Alves said.

Cristiano Vicente took three pictures and is among the winners. “My hands were shaking, I was a bit nervous, but it turned out the results were better than I had expected,” he said on the Facebook page for the local secretariat running the initiative.

According to Rafael Alves, the photography project is one way to make information more widely available, above all. “It's a way of giving them the opportunity to show the world that they, too, have critical insight of the places they live in, because they are people experiencing discrimination on a daily basis—they are virtually invisible.”

The coordinator pointed out that the ultimate goal of the project is to draft a local plan for homeless policy that also involves an arts and culture dimension.

Translated by Mayra Borges