rocinhaseen from within
Three photography projects made with the children and young people of Rocinha — and three exhibitions pasted on its walls, where the stories begin.
three projects, in order- 2024 · with REF Rocinhavibe da rocinhaHow do young people show their Rocinha?
- 2025 · fotogracria × mOstviver é um luxofeaturedWhat if the favela were the museum?
- 2025 – 2026 · fotogracria × mOstos menor da rua 4How do you connect two neighbourhoods an ocean apart?
the favela is, in itself, a living museum.
Nobody came here to “give people a voice”. The images are made together: the children, young people and residents of Rocinha take photographs, and Fotogracria and the mOst team photograph with them, on walks, in workshops and during encounters. The titles, captions and hanging choices belong to the participants. mOst, and then Fotogracria, opened a space, brought tools and walked alongside.
Then the images went back into the alleys. Pasted on the neighbourhood’s walls, they were seen first by the people who live there — before they reached this online archive.
rocinha, from its alleys
Clinging to the slopes of Morro Dois Irmãos, between Gávea and São Conrado, Rocinha is the most populous favela in Brazil: 72,021 residents in the 2022 census. It is usually shown from a distance — a postcard view from the beach, or a headline on the day of a police operation.
This site starts from the other side: the becos and vielas, alleys so narrow two people barely pass; the lajes, flat concrete roofs where people dance, hang washing and fly kites; Rua 4, Portão Vermelho, and Macega and the T.L. at the very top. Each place has its name, its history, its regulars. The children of Rocinha know them by heart. They are the ones who photographed them.
This photo gives me an inexplicable calm, and nostalgia for my mother’s day. — vibe da rocinha, 2024
where the images were made
a short glossary
- criaSomeone born and raised in the favela. A word of belonging, and of pride.
- lajeThe flat concrete roof of a house: terrace, playground, dance floor, lookout.
- beco, vielaThe narrow alleys, often stepped, that connect the houses.
- morroThe hill — and, by extension, the favela built on it.
- os menor“The little ones”, the neighbourhood kids — in the popular plural, without agreement.
- nevou, reflexoBleached hair: all white (“it snowed”) or in small blond dots made with a salon cap.
- passinhoA dance born in Rio’s favelas, danced to funk.
- pipaA kite, flown from the lajes.
- lambe-lambeA poster pasted onto a wall with a brush. The form taken by every exhibition on this site.
viver é um luxo
Six rooms, ten walls, an exhibition pasted across the whole favela: the heart of this site, made with the photographer Fotogracria and the children of the T.L.
fotogracria, cria da rua 4
Salemm, known as Fotogracria, photographer and creative director, born and raised on Rua 4.
Salemm, known to everyone as Fotogracria, is a photographer and creative director. She was born and raised in Rocinha, on Rua 4. Tired of the negative images of her community, she set out to show the beauty of its alleys through her own eyes as a resident, with creativity and the tools of audiovisual work.
Her images do not come from reportage: they come from a life. Gustavo on his motorbike on the slopes of the new Rua 4, where the narrow alleys they grew up in used to be; the girls dancing funk on the laje of Eliane, her mother; Maquininha, the barber whose path she has followed since 2020. The photographer is inside the picture as much as behind it.
- Laboratório de ImagensA residency run by Observatório de Favelas with Instituto Moreira Salles: an e-book now held in the IMS and Observatório collections.
- Pontos de VistaA residency that ended in a printed book, with nine other resident artists from the peripheries.
- FUNK! Um grito de ousadia e liberdadeTwo works on “Loiro Pivete” shown at Museu de Arte do Rio, then at Maison Folie Wazemmes in Lille.
- Google Arts & CultureSeven works in the permanent collection, shown at Museu do Amanhã and at the opening of Museu das Favelas.
- Ludmilla, Rock in Rio 2022 · The Town 2023Her photographs formed the stage backdrop for the singer’s ten-year career show.
- AINDACreative director of the hybrid magazine, on the programme “Fazendo a Cena”, Canal OFF.
desapagamento: un-erasing
Before it was Rocinha — before it was even the Quebra Cangalha farm — this hill was Tamoio land in the sixteenth century. Building on that knowledge and on her family archives, Fotogracria started the project “desapagamento” (“un-erasing”): keeping alive the memory of Indigenous peoples and their descendants in the favelas.
The first photograph in the series shows Abeguar on her laje in Laboriô, the highest part of Rocinha, facing Morro Dois Irmãos, next to an embaúba — a hardy tree that matters for the regrowth of the Atlantic Forest.
nevou, reflexo: hair as ritual
She is also researching the culture of bleached hair in the favelas, and the erasure of Indigenous identity. The “reflexo”, small blond dots made with a perforated salon cap, is for her the mark of someone touched by Guaraci, the Sun; the “nevou”, hair bleached completely white, the mark of someone touched by Jaci, the Moon.
her role in the projects
Since 2025, Fotogracria has designed and led the projects together with mOst. She runs the photography and art direction workshops, supports the children as they give their images a title and a caption, shows her own photographs next to theirs, and puts up the exhibitions with them on the hill.
Her way of seeing comes from inside — from the alleys and lajes she knows as a resident. With mOst, that meeting became a method: real co-creation, in which the participants take part in every stage, from the first idea to the pasting.
queremos que a arte aconteça onde as histórias nascem.We want art to happen where the stories begin.
with, not about
At mOst, a project is never made “about” a neighbourhood: it is built from it, with the people who build it every day. In Rocinha, the workshops were designed as a complete process, from looking to making, from conversation to image.
At each session, the group chose what it wanted to show, how to show it, and which stories deserved to take shape. Nobody wrote in anybody else’s place.
The mOst team takes photographs too. Chabanne, and now Naila as well, make many images with the young people and beside them: on walks, in workshops, during portrait sessions and while pasting up. These photographs are part of the creative process: they keep a record of the encounters and of the co-creation, and they join the shared archive, alongside the participants’ own.
- walk the territory
- photograph
- listen
- interview
- title and caption
- sort and edit
- choose the hang
- paste in the street
- look together
photography
Framing, waiting, choosing. On film and digital, the children photograph their friends, their places, their heroes.
art direction
Posing, staging, choosing the light: with Fotogracria, a photograph also becomes an image built together.
subjective mapping
In 2024, everyone draws their own Rocinha: routes, loved places, avoided places. The map then guides the photo walks.
the interview
Short interviews with neighbours and relatives: listening before showing.
title and caption
Each image gets a name and a sentence, in the language of the neighbourhood. That is where a way of seeing becomes a story.
lambe-lambe
Large posters pasted onto walls with a brush: the exhibition moves into the street, with no opening hours and no ticket.
keeping, in order to give back
Archiving is an act of repair. Her family archives led her back to Rocinha’s Indigenous history. Her photographs of Maquininha, of Bruno, of the children of Rua 4 build, year after year, a memory that nobody else will keep for them.
Bruno, one of the first photographers she knew, started out photographing Rocinha’s bodyboarders. Today she is the one photographing him: the archive passes from hand to hand.
An archive is not a collection stored in a box: it is what goes back to the neighbourhood. Contact sheets pasted in the street, the authors’ first names, captions in their own words: the images of 2024 answer those of 2025, which answer those of 2026.
This site is its online form: a living, open archive, as easy to browse from Rocinha as from Montreuil, and one that will keep growing.
three contact sheets pasted side by side, 2026: macega / terra da lama · rua 4 · la noue / clos-français
exhibiting where people live
Rather than bringing the community to the museum, make the favela the museum. All three exhibitions opened first in Rocinha, on its walls: large posters pasted with a brush in the alleys, on house fronts, outside a barber’s, at the foot of a staircase.
Passers-by stop, children find their own photos, neighbours recognise each other. A street exhibition has no opening hours, no ticket and no guard: it belongs to everyone, and it ages with the walls that carry it. That is what it means to turn working-class neighbourhoods into places of culture.
2024 · vibe da rocinhasee the exhibition →
2025 · viver é um luxosee the exhibition →
2025–2026 · os menor da rua 4see the exhibition →from one periphery to another
mOst works in working-class neighbourhoods in France and beyond: Maré in Rio, Valle de Chalco in Mexico, l’Almont in Melun, La Noue in Montreuil. With “os menor da rua 4”, two of these places spoke to each other directly: the children of La Noue / Clos Français introduced their neighbourhood to the children of Rua 4, and their photographs were pasted up in Rocinha, next to those from Macega and Rua 4.
Rocinha and Montreuil, Rua 4 and La Noue: each with its own language and energy, but with the same conviction — the peripheries are not the margins. They are a centre of creation, memory and future.
This is our neighbourhood: le monde est à Noue!— the children of La Noue / Clos Français, Montreuil, 2025
see the three contact sheets →