Few blocks from the City Hall, the Stock Exchange, the Central Bank, the city Cathedral and lots of public institutions, among so many other companies and services that a location like this can attract.
The concrete heart of an impressive human concentration.
By these streets, hundred thousand, maybe millions, walk or passes by every day.
The chaotic traffic creates infinite rivers of car lights that can be seen 24/7 from each corner.
Huge buildings, unfinished constructions, abandon for decades, dirty and covered with pixo, the most aggressive style of street art, are now occupied by hundreds of families.
In just one of the buildings, 475 families occupy 27 unfinished floors.
Kids play and run.
Clotheslines are located on the outside, without any protection from falling down, in front of the entire city.
Broken glasses, exposed wires, walls with holes that you can cross. Each floor has one bathroom and one sink. Stairs goes round and round guiding you trough an unpredictable experience. No patterns, no references.
Every once in a while a person passes by. Some look, few talk, magically, they all seems ready to smile.
You can feel that all know about a stranger presence.
An old woman can be seen coming up from the stairs, calmly, she knows how long is the path until the top floors. Carrying her purse and market bags, with her low tempo rhythmic walk, she passes by without giving attention to the stranger in her world.
On the walls, messages are written or drawn to tell a story about life, resistance, clans and regulations.
Exclusive laws sew a coexistence reality among a random group of people.
A parallel world, with even a basic market within, own by one of the residents.
Windows, with breath taking views, made of compensated wood or sticks, even at the 27th floor.
People that took advantage of endless judicial battles and a disinterested State. People, that uses strength and organization, to impose their reality to a society that doesn’t care to listen.
About the author:
Marketing executive until 2014, Alessandro Vecchi, 40 years old Italian raised in Brazil, decided to leave his career to find his way trough the art of storytelling. Started with cinema, where realized the passion for the frame. Since than has been photographing, using the streets as school.
