Olympic Favelas

(Hardback)

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Description

In many of Rio de Janeiro's shanty towns, or favelas, the city's housing authority, the Secretaria Municipal de Habitao (SMH), is enforcing policies to evict families and demolish their homes--often with little or no notice, and sometimes with use of force--in advance of construction for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games. Responding to news reports of these evictions, in late 2012 New York-based Marc Ohrem-Leclef (born 1971) set out to portray the people directly and indirectly affected by these evictions, and the residents organizing their neighbors in resistance to SMH's abuse of power. Photographs of the subjects in their respective environments are complemented by portraits in which they hold an emergency flare, representing their ongoing struggle to avoid the destruction of their homes while using the core symbol of the Olympic Games, also a symbol of liberty and independence.

Reviews

Marc Ohrem-Leclef, whose photography book Olympic Favela (published by Damiani) features portraits of those threatened with eviction. In 2012 and again last year, the German-born, Brooklyn based photographer traveled with his medium-format camera through Rio's various (sometimes dangerous) favelas to document the impact on the local population of what officials call "pacification."--Cooper Arnie "ARTnews"
This volume looks at a different side of Brazilian life- it explores the favelas, where the poorest of the poor live in informal settlements with few amenities, from which they are being driven by officialdom as their country prepares for the Olympic Games. Ohrem- Leclef posed many of them with Olympic-esque emergency torches in their neighborhoods. Many of them are being paid to leave their neighborhoods or being pushed out less ceremoniously.--Lorna Koski "WWD"
To prep for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games, officals in Brazil ordered the destruction of large swaths of Rio de Janeiro's favelas, which more than a million people call home. This book document sthe displaced residents and their defiance, symobilized in emergency flames raised like anti-Olympic torches.--Debbie Grossman "American Photo"