São Paulo and the "Minhocão"

São Paulo is a Brazilian megalopolis of 12 millions inhabitants. Urbanism is dense and life on the streets is intense. In spite, 'Paulistas' know how to have a break or to take advantage of a the freshness of the evening by occupying free spaces of the city (parks, squares and even a urban highway). However, compared to its immensity, the city offers few spaces where everyone can enjoy activities away from the hustle and bustle of the city.

"o Minhocão" ('the big worm' in Brazilian, pronounced more or less "meeknockan") is a well-known area. Minhocão is actually the nickname given to the Elevado João Goulart, a winding elevated highway in the hearth of the city, for a distance of about 3 kilometers and sometimes close to 5 meters from the buildings.

The highway was closed to cars during these periods in 1989 for various reasons: noise, pollution, too little traffic in the evenings and weekends (it is built on a street following the same route)

Informally, it is on this bridge that residents walk every night of the week from 21:30 to 6:30 the next morning and all weekends from Friday evening until Monday morning.

We discovered the Minhocão during walks in São Paulo and we remained captivated by the poetry that emanated from this place.

Today, faced with the users and the association parque Minhocão desires to appropriate the spot, it leads the municipality to gradually recognize and accept the potentialities of the highway. You can follow the daily life of the park on the instagram of Parque Minhocão.

Photos

Fascinated, we returned several times on the Minhocão, evenings and weekends, excited and amused by the aesthetics of situations that occur there. We wanted to take photos to reflect the daily life of this changing public space, where the pedestrian is re-appropriating a place designed for a different use.

Thus, we documented this place, for a year, each of us with its camera, its machine-induced format and its color induced by the film:

Iris : camera : Minolta XGM 35mm 24x36 / film : black and white / lens : low angle fixed focal length.

Antoine : camera : Mamiya RZ67, medium format 6x7 / film : color / lens : wide angle fixed focal length.

Photos were taken from a pedestrian point of view, on the top of the highway, with the asphalt pavement as a visual guide throughout the book.

More than a photobook, a visual editing

The chosen protocol of shooting (formats, colors and framing) naturally guided the design of a specific and customized editing of the book.

The book presents several levels of readings. First, the book tells the story of the highway and its urban context, then, the users appear and come to populate the landscape, by appropriating the Minhocão. Color photos set the scene throughout the book, while black-and-white photos extend the story of the place, adding architectural details, daily life and narrow points of view.

The reading of the book is then sequenced by pauses where photos colors and blacks white are dialoguing. The decor is extended, the architectures meet each other and sometimes the characters cross each other ...

The book size is 17,5cm x 28,25 cm (35 x 28,25 cm wide opened).

The cover remind the asphalt pavment color, will be embossed with the book logo (paper : Fredigoni materica ardesia 250g), it will be a "Swiss" binding for an optimal opening.

The book contend 64 pages, 40 color pages (paper : Fredigoni Arco Print Mlik 140g) and 24 black and white pages 150mm x 210mm (paper : Fredigoni Arco Design 120g)

19 black and white photos 24 colors photos

Iris et Antoine

Iris and Antoine are working and living in Paris.

Iris is an architect (graduated at 'Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Paris Val de Seine' in 2017) who actually work in ECLLA bureau in Paris.

Antoine is architect (graduated at 'Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Paris Val de Seine' in 2012) and photographer. He created GANG in 2012, an artistic collaboration with Jérémie Dru, actually in an architect residency at Hermanville-sur-Mer.

He works on architecture, photography, illustration, graphic design, always linked to a specify territory.

Urbanautica Institute

The book ‘o Minhocão will be published by Urbanautica Institute, an independent publisher mainly working on visual anthropology and cultural landscape.

Since 2010 the Institute has collaborated with cultural institutions worldwide on exhibitions and educational activities.

Famous for its Journal, which has enhanced worldwide a critical thinking about photography.

Urbanautica Institute has recently launched a new bookline 'Urbanautica Books'.

www.urbanauticainstitute.com
www.urbanautica.com