Teemu Kivikangas

The Divided City
2008
Photographs

Exhibition history:
Lens Politica 2008, FAFA Gallery, Helsinki, Finland

Rio de Janeiro is a divided city, as is every mega-city in the world. Yet the city's unique geography divides Rio in a very special way. The megalopolis is a mosaic of sea and city, of hills and rain forests, a labyrinth of highways and unpaved paths. The poor in Rio live right next to the rich. They haven't been pushed to the fringes of the city, which would be the usual solution to get the slums out of sight and out of mind, nor has the middle-class fled to seek refuge in the suburbs, as is the case in many North American cities.

Instead, the communities of the poor - called favelas - sprawl on the hills above high-income neighborhoods, and homeless kids - the poorest of poor, those with nothing - roam the beaches among those who have it all. Such proximity naturally evokes fear in the rich. Poverty and social problems breed violence and Rio has plenty of both. The media is happy to pour gas into the flames: news are full of murders, robberies and car hijackings.

As a result, the rich are caging themselves in high rises, seeking protection from the dangers real and imagined. The poor communities on the other hand live outside the official law, under the control of powerful drug factions. The leaders of criminal organizations rule over the favelas like feudal lords. In exchange for silence and protection of the community, the drug factions keep the favela relatively free from petty crime and sometimes even offer modest social services, like funding parties and sports teams.

The Divided City, a term originally coined by journalist Zuenir Ventura in his 1994 book of same name, "Cidade Partida", is a photo essay about the over-lappings of this social and geographical divide, an exercise in artistic photo journalism. It was photographed during the spring 2008 in Copacabana-district and the favelas of Babilonia and Rocinha. Whole of the series consists of close to 50 photographs, some of them originally published on-line in my earlier blog. Images have also been published in Kuvas-magazine and shown in gallery as a photoinstallation.

Photo reportage in Flickr is currently mostly off-line, but will be made fully available in future.

When The Divided City was exhibited in Lens Politica 2008 at FAFA Gallery, I created a photoinstallation of 25 small images, trying to illustrate the complex geography of the social situation in Rio de Janeiro. Map above was available to the viewers to help navigate the pictures and provide further explanations. Areas controlled by the state and different drug organizations are shown with color coding.

Installation was positively reviewed in an article on the Lens Politica-festival in Uusi Suomi.

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