Rio is a city that lends itself to extremes of the imagination. Outsiders know it by its sharpest iterations – the city of violence, of furious foot-pounding samba, of bodies on beaches and saturated tropical greenery. But Brazilians themselves are often found in the in-between moments. The languor. The moments when the city decelerates and becomes still, even stuck in place. A child tries to stop crying as he sits with a lifeguard when he’s lost sight of his parents at the Piscinão de Ramos. The bus stop in front of the favela. Lunch break at the half-abandoned construction site of a police station. The Rio Parada Funk was supposed to be a live performance of the electronic music genre long associated with drug traffickers. They wanted instead to make funk palatable for a family-friendly crowd on a weekend afternoon. But it was slow, and people didn’t dance much. Looking over his photos afterward, Massimo told me: “I like it. They look bored.” Because Rio’s in-between moments are where the Cariocas retreat from the extremes and into their own imaginations.
Taylor Barnes in Rio de Janeiro. Massimo Vitali, Les éditions Be-Poles, Collection Portraits de villes, Paris, 2014.
