Page 102 - ARTE!Brasileiros #48

THE ART OF MEMORY ENGLISH VERSION
INTERVIEW JOÃO PINA | PAGES 62 TO 67 In 2016, while Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment process was still under way, you said
PHOTOGRAPHY OF that the fact that Brazil had not discussed its past – and that the Armed Forces and
some politicians continued to apologize for the coup – was very worrying because it
THE MEMORY was sowing the ground so that abuse could happen again. One such politician, Jair

WITH WORKS ON THE RESISTANCE TO THE SALAZARIST DICTATORSHIP IN Bolsonaro, was elected president. How do you see this moment?
This process of not looking at memory in Brazil is very similar to what happens in Portugal,
PORTUGAL, OPERATION CONDOR IN SOUTH AMERICA AND POLICE VIOLENCE so it is not strange to me. But I look more concerned at the Brazilian case because I feel
IN RIO DE JANEIRO, PORTUGUESE PHOTOGRAPHER JOÃO PINA DEALS WITH, that the institutions in Portugal are a little more solid or at least there is less political
FROM RECORDS, THE PAST HISTORY AND TRAUMA instrumentalization of the institutions at this time. And this oblivion in Brazil, coupled
with other problems of populism – which proposes easy recipes for deep problems – has
BY MARCOS GRINSPUM FERRAZ given us what we are seeing with the election of the Bolsonaro, with a huge polarization
and an exponential increase in violence that was thought to be resolved.
WHETHER IN PORTUGAL, his homeland, or in the various Latin American countries where
he worked, photographer João Pina, 38, has devoted much of his 20 years of career Violences inherited from dictatorship?
to making “stories not fall into oblivion”. From the family inherited interest in politics – Because things cannot be resolved by osmosis on their own, they have to be spoken,
grandparents, communist militants, were political prisoners during the Salazarist regime. stirred, remedied, and only then can a process be terminated. In Brazil, as in Portugal,
He also understood the importance of memory and knowing the past both to understand where this resolution process did not exist, many people thought this would be resolved.
the present and to repair historical trauma and injustice. But the fact is that Brazil continues to have barracks named after the dictators and that
No wonder, Por Teu Livre Pensamento, his first authorial work, was a sort of reckoning we had a deputy, now president, dedicating his impeachment vote to a torturer who should
with his own history, from records of survivors of political persecution in Portugal. have been arrested for crimes against humanity. And a good part of the population thinks
Condor, a project that took nine years to complete and resulted in a book and series of this is normal. So as long as these conditions objectively exist, it is normal for this kind
exhibitions around the world, investigated Operation Condor, articulation between six of outcome to happen. The consequences are what we are seeing.
South American military dictatorships (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and
Uruguay) organized to suppress leftist opposition. With the amnesty came this idea that one had to forget to move on. Do you really
Other projects came in Portugal, Cuba, Colombia (on the FARC), Rio de Janeiro (46750, have to remember to move on?
which includes the number of homicides in the city between 2007 and 2016), among It’s hard to give a recipe. I have read books including the right to forget, not just the right
others. Currently, the photographer develops a work on Tarrafal, a concentration camp to remember. But I definitely think that ignoring the problem is not a recipe. History
created by the Portuguese government in Cape Verde in the 1930s, and begins to address must be remembered to understand how things got where they came. And in Brazil this
the slave heritage in Portugal. Unfortunately, according to Pina, looking into the past exercise is very little done. This exercise has never been done within the Armed Forces,
is still a little done work both in Brazil and in her country – although there discussions which continue to argue that there was a liberating revolution that saved Brazil from
about colonialism and dictatorship begin to become more present. communism, this bogeyman that eats little children. On the other hand, much of the left
In the Brazilian case, most worrying for the photographer, the result is, among others, has not evolved its speech either. We must not forget that the Workers Party (PT) has
the election of a president, Jair Bolsonaro, who praises “a torturer who should have been been in power for 12 years and has done very little to discuss these issues. There was
arrested for crimes against humanity”. Moreover, in the case of Rio de Janeiro, “I have a National Truth Commission, but what followed it in practice was absolutely nothing.
no doubt that the fact that the military police kill on average 1,000 people a year has to And with the current political landscape, then, it will be less than nothing, the setback,
do with this culture that comes from the dictatorship”, he says. the rewriting of history.
In each project, from long research and investigation, Pina builds narratives about open or
hidden stories, present or past. The violence that appears explicitly in the current scenes of This speech by a government that comes to save the country from communism,
police actions in Rio appears otherwise silent in an empty room that was used for torture from 1964, is very similar to the one that elected Bolsonaro...
sessions in Argentina or on the faces of torture survivors in South American countries. Just like in 1964, when it was said that everything was communism. That is, whoever says
With an increasing role outside photojournalism, where she began her career, Pina has that everything is communism does not even know what communism is. Communism,
exhibited, over the years, in museums and galleries, and has published three books. “It’s fascism, are words that entered the distorted lexicon. Even the left makes this mistake
completely out of my control and I don’t care how the market or academia classifies my when accusing anyone of fascist. Sometimes it calls fascists people who are neoliberal,
work – whether it’s documentary, artistic, journalistic photography. What interests me is which is completely different. But finally, it is a long discussion, which has to do with
storytelling. I can only classify myself as an author who has a voice and things to say”. the lack of political and civic education. We have to think how to overcome this. Brazil
Read the full interview below: suffers greatly from the lack of formal education, so to speak, and history becomes more
manipulable. And if many Brazilians, even at school, do not really learn what happened
ARTE!Brasileiros – Many of your projects deal with events of a time you did not live. in 1964, in 1968, in the Araguaia Guerrilla, etc., this is worrying.
How to use photography, which captures the present moment, to address these past And in the other South American countries you researched, is the picture very
facts. I mean, what devices did you use and use? different?
João Pina – Some devices of which I am aware and others not. The work goes through The situations are different. Argentina is a country where these issues are very present,
investigation, listening to primary sources to reach clues, places, people and objects, because soon after the dictatorship civil society mobilized a lot – and the victims were
so to speak. I think it has to do with it, studying, researching, interviewing and then also many. So this became the order of the day and there were political conditions for the
understanding how you can tell stories from a visual standpoint. So I will follow the clues discussion to proceed. In some ways, it is an exemplary case. I think it would be unthinkable
of this visualization of the past in the present. And from that I create. in Argentina for a figure to adopt a speech like Bolsonaro’s about dictatorship and to
have such popularity and prominence.
There always seems to be a desire to make public those often forgotten erased
stories. Does it make sense to think like that? Finally, moving to the 46750 project on violence in Rio de Janeiro, there seems to
Yes, I think this is my mission, to be able to broaden these voices and make these stories be a strong dialogue – perhaps not so explicit – with what one sees in Condor, as
not fall into oblivion. This is my major concern, especially at this point in time, when it police violence in Brazil is still a direct remnant of repressive violence of dictatorship.
seems that we are rewriting and reinterpreting history according to who is in government. Does it make sense?
That to me is very scary. It makes perfect sense. I started Condor in 2005 and 46750 in 2007, at a time when I

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