Alagoinhas's life: Photo exhibition of 3 months in Brazil

(MENAFNEditorial) iCrowdNewswire - Jul 19, 2017 Alagoinhas's life

Photo exhibition of 3 months in Brazil

I'm a young photographer and I just got back from 3 months volunteering in a neighbourhood of a small city in Brazil called Alagoinhas.

While I was there I lived and worked mainly with young people, living their daily lives alongside them. Since coming back I've been trying to share the experiences I had, the highlights of the time I spent there. Using the photos and films I took, I want to put on an exhibition in a small village in France called Taizé. However not being able to finance this by myself, I am looking at crowd funding.This funding will allow me to make quality prints and mount them in frames.

If I manage to raise more then it would allow me to take the exhibition to other places or to make a donation to the community that welcomed me in Alagoinhas.

I have spent a total of 5 months in Brazil in this small town of Bahia: 2 months in 2012, and 3 months in 2017. On returning, I was immediately confronted with the stark reality of what that means, discovering many of the young people I had worked with in 2012 had since been killed.

Life in Alagoinhas is complicated and, paradoxically, simple at the same time.

Despite being small, this city is one of the most dangerous in Brazil. Violence and drug trafficking are common.

The state schools are often on strike, sometimes for several months at a time. The gap between rich and poor can be felt more and more meaning that only a handful have access to Higher Education.

The community where I was living welcomes young people of all ages each day. Our role was leading activities and projects that would help these young people to stay out of the circle of drugs and violence that would otherwise suck them in. We also set up six vocational courses :Audio Mixing in a recording studio, Motorcycle Maintenance and Mechanics, Arc Welding, Administrative Computing, Hairdressing, Electrical Engineeting.

Most of what we found ourselves doing revolved around hip hop culture. Through a local rap group I was able to get the young people interested and share in a common passion. We organisedfreestyle music workshops, writing sessions, recording and mixing sessions, as well as film shoots.I am a self-taught photographer and film maker. That was one of the reasons I was involved in working with these young people. It was important for me to show them that all these things are as accessible to them as to any other person, regardless of their social status or how fat their wallet is. I wanted to give them an opening; to show them that even by learning alone there is hope and a future. So it's in that line that I want to create this exhibition andshare what I have experienced.

Many of the video clips and series of photos that I took during the trip made these young people smile a lot. I met an incredible love of life, human warmth, smiles, and remarkable strength of character,a look at life very different from my own, and one that I have started to adopt myself.

(that's me on the right)

All of these things made me want to set up this exhibition. It won't be about poverty but will simply speak about life, about humanity and the remarkable energy that I found in this city.

I fell in love with Brazil, and especially this small neighborhood. Maybe you will also find something to smile about, something to make you feel what I was privileged enough to live there, and maybe even something to make you fall in love with this surprising place too.

The exhibition will be composed by framed printed pictures. The frames will be hand made by a young artisan.

There will be 23 framed pictures.

Printing :
40x60cm = 70€x23=1610
120x40cm = 105€

Order for hand made frame :
Materials + hand work = 2000€

Frame's lightning :
LED Lightning system = 200€

Logistic :
Fuel = 45€x2
Highway fee = 31.30€x2

Total = 4067.60€

L'idéal serait de récolté 4900€ afin de financé les 8% du site et les contreparties.

The ideal would be to collect 4900€ to pay for the 8% of the site and the goodies to send.

My name is Jean-Pierre (João-Pedro in Portuguese, that's what they called me in Brazil). I'm 31 and studied electrical engineering before studying art at the HEAR (Rhine School of Art) in Strasbourg. It was only during the 3rd year of my studies, borrowing my older brother's camera, that I discovered video and photography. My first subjects were mainly my childhood neighbourhood, in the suburbs north-east of Paris, the people of my city. Being passionate about sharing, I realized that capturing an image or a video, and knowing how to show it, can transmit a great deal of emotion. Since that time I have continued to be interested and to feed my professional knowledge of photography and film, trying to learn as much as possible. It's through experiences like the ones I had in Brazil that my profession as photographer and film maker makes sense to me. For me, putting what I know to work for those who have not had the opportunities or luck that I have, is the greatest satisfaction I have ever felt.

Spadge Nguyen

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