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Essays of Geography
Vol. 11 No. 24 (2024)COVERRuta Nacional 9, a few turns south of La Quiaca (Argentina) – January 2023
To relate to the world around us, and expand that environment, on two wheels and powered by the strength of one's own legs, is the most beautiful way I know to discover new paths and new places, both on the face of the earth and within oneself. On these journeys, the bicycle becomes a great partner. In it and in the bags it carries, we find carefully selected belongings, having only what we really need to dress, find shelter for sleeping, eat, and make small repairs on the bike – reducing the set of necessary material goods to a minimum.
A dear friend and cyclist says that bicycles need names, or perhaps she is convinced that bicycles have names and by naming them, we reveal them to the world. I am thus sure that the one in the photo has a name, and even more certain that it revealed its name to me back in 2006, the moment it became my two-wheeled partner for so many journeys. But I suspect its name is "On the road again," the refrain of a song first performed in 1980 by the "outlaw" singer Willie Nelson, which plays in my ears every time I ride it and head towards another unknown part of the journey ahead. "On the road again?" the bike seems to ask, and in a low tone mixed with the wind in my ears, it's unclear if the words come from the bike or the wind itself: "If we are on the road, we have already arrived where we should be – on the road!"
Among such diverse and beautiful landscapes, which the often-suffering land never tires of inviting us to explore, deserts and mountains are certainly the most fascinating to me. Imagine then desert regions in the mountains! And it is this combination that makes the high Andes, the Altiplano, so fascinating to explore by bicycle. "Breathtaking" in every sense, an experience that becomes eternal in the visual and sensual memory. This photo was taken as "On the road again" was taking me southward a day after crossing the border from Villazón, still in Bolivia, to La Quiaca, now in Argentina, on one of the days that made up January 2022. Four days of cycling remain to reach Tucumán, and what in my imagination would be a smooth descent to San Salvador de Jujuy turns into one of the most laborious stretches, with strong winds rushing up the Rio Grande valley to fill low-pressure areas high in the mountains. The day this photo was taken ended with a night protected from the winds, lightning, and thunder of a small storm so common in the high mountains, in a riverbed next to a stone bridge of a railway line descending the same valley as Ruta 9, by which I leave the roof of Abya Yala behind, already feeling nostalgic as I still say goodbye to the mountains, their people, and their many forms, colors, and stories to tell (about the world, about ourselves).
Photo taken with a Redmi Note 9 cell phone
Timo Bartholl
Assistant Professor in the Geography Department at UFF/Niterói
@timomesmo
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Essays of Geography
Vol. 10 No. 22 (2023)COVERPier at Praia da Bica, Jardim Guanabara – Ilha do Governador, Rio de Janeiro, November 18, 2022.
Whenever I start a photo session, upon arriving at a place that evokes affection, I take my decisive shot. "This is what I want to talk about today." Limiting, even if only virtually, the space where I will inhabit and investigate during these looks, has always proved necessary, even without knowing where I will end up at the end of the session.
This pier is located at Praia da Bica, which is in Jardim Guanabara, south of Ilha do Governador, an administrative region of the city of Rio de Janeiro. In the middle of the frame, the only person present in the scene seems to be heading towards the water, as if it were an extension of the land. But not from the center of the pier; there was a choice to move to the side. And later, as I could witness, to sit there and contemplate.
Leaving the man's height proportional to the extent of water in front of him in perspective seems to produce a real possibility of this path that could be followed by the bay. However, the impossibility of reaching the landscape of the city of Rio de Janeiro becomes more present than before when you reach the end. Now, more than ever, you are invited to look. The expanse of water, the emptiness near the pier, the structural aesthetic similarities of the pier and the Rio-Niterói Bridge in the background, the densification of boats as you approach the city center – the contrasts emerge as your gaze travels through the image.
This day was no different. However, I am fortunate that this place is 50 meters from my house and evokes an affection that, after three years living abroad, is not too hard to reach. Even so, this was the first shot that dictated the direction of a session that told me a lot about the city, our relationship with it over the years, and the moment to stop and look at what matters.
The pier was not even renovated at the time. Still, despite the visible fragility sculpted by time in the twisted planks, the broken support pillars, and the absence of the ropes that were once present there, the landscape of the city of Rio de Janeiro is not contained. It calls for a look, inviting a brief journey to the edge, bringing a stark contrast to the calmness of the bay.
At the moment, I decided to write from the pier, now already renovated, but still seeming fragile, in parallel with the bridge. There is a light and continuous breeze. The view of Rio de Janeiro ahead is not as clear as the day of this photo. However, it seems that this space suspended over the water between land and sea, with the sound of the streets of Jardim Guanabara behind me, the buses passing, the pruning of trees, creates a momentary isolation that the urban environment generally does not permit.
As I suppose about the man in the image, it seems I come here not seeking time, nor even silence, but space to think. Today, with such short depths of field, jumping from one screen to another, I feel, more than ever, the need for this pause to see what is further away. And in a simple journey to the edge of the pier, though the body stays, the mind embarks.
Sony A7iii - 85mm 1.8
Gabriel Puente
Photographer
@puentegabriel
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Essays of Geography
Vol. 10 No. 21 (2023)COVERDaiya River, Nikko, Tochigi, Japan, March 14, 2019.
This photo tells a story and a half.
Immediately, it portrays a man in the vastness, looking at something unseen. Obviously, it also portrays my perspective and engages with what led me there. For my part, the story is not very different from all the love and separation stories we know: with a broken heart, I found myself going to Japan to study, and with a broken heart again, I found myself traveling to Nikko to rest. While my main activity had been learning to speak the language and understand a culture foreign to me, my trip to Nikko was an attempt to escape; I wanted to find some silence to listen to myself.
This image was one of the first that struck me during the trip: a river much larger than most I had seen — I hadn't had the opportunity to see the enormous Brazilian rivers until then, having only the small streams of the interior of Rio de Janeiro in my memory — but transformed by human action. It was preserved nature, yet tamed. Like a huge garden constructed there. My gaze was naturally contemplative. I was trying to contemplate there what I couldn't, at the time, contemplate within myself: this nature under control.
And in the midst of all this nature was half a story more. Half because I can't tell it fully, as I don't know it. However, there it was, materialized in a man occupying a rather unusual position. The access was not complicated, but it wasn't simple either. What caught my attention most, however, was that he was not looking — or at least did not seem to be looking — contemplatively at the river. On the contrary, his gaze seemed focused, as if he were searching for or observing something. I don't know and can't know what that something was; or what that man was doing there in the middle of the week. That’s the other half of the story.
It was in the face of this contrast, between my contemplative gaze and the man's focused gaze, that it occurred to me, unassumingly, to take this photo. I took thousands of photos with this camera — including for the first time — that day, but this is one I always remember. It reminds me that sometimes, when I look at the world searching for something, I might find another way of looking too.
Canon SX 430IS. Lens 4.3 - 193.5mm
Daniel Henrique Bernar Freitas
Physics Teacher for Youth and Adults
Contact: daniel.hbfreitas@gmail.com
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Essays of Geography
Vol. 9 No. 20 (2023)COVER
Praia Grande da Cajaíba, Paraty, Rio de Janeiro, January 2020.
It is customary for anyone who arrives at the Juatinga Peninsula to be overwhelmed by the green of the forest and the blue of the sea that surrounds the region. However, not even paradise is composed only of scenic beauty. It is no different with Praia Grande da Cajaíba in Paraty, on the southern coast of Rio de Janeiro, a place where the population has always fought hard against predatory real estate speculation to remain on the territory.
The image was taken on the plateau that shelters the camping site of Mr. Altamiro, in the middle of dense Atlantic Forest vegetation, protected in its essence by the caiçaras and institutionally by the Juatinga REEJ. From the point of view of the photograph, we see the flour house in the center, a place intrinsic to the (re)existence of Mr. Altamiro and also common to the rest of the caiçaras.
Altamiro says that he is very rich and that his wealth comes from his place of residence. The flour mill, built by Altamiro dos Santos' own hands, symbolizes part of this wealth.
Photo taken with the digital camera of a Xiaomi cell phone, Redmi Note 7.
Rhuan Muniz Sartore Fernandes
Assistant Editor of Ensaios de Geografia and Master's student in Geography (UFRJ)
Contact: rhuansartore@gmail.com -
Essays of Geography
Vol. 9 No. 19 (2022)COVER
Bunharém river, Arraial d'Ajuda, Porto Seguro, Bahia, January 2018.
Arriving in Arraial d'Ajuda, Bahia, I came across this gentleman crossing the Bunharém River on a busy day. The waters were risky contrasting with the calmness of this man. I was on the ferry, crossing the river with my family, feeling the initial traces of peace that Bahia provides.
Watching that man for a while, I noticed that he was enjoying himself. He didn't want the waters to be calm. He wanted them to be exactly as they were, challenging, making the known mysterious. Without telling me anything and without even knowing his name, I felt him at home, experiencing the nuances of his backyard on a different day. He wasn't looking to cross from one shore to the other, he was just surrendered to that momentary current.
To navigate requires humility and he reminded me of this just by watching him. As a geographer I understand the world with people in their spaces, making them their places or not. I understand the passage of time as the passage of a river, without direction, with different perceptions of what is real, but moving forward.
Canon 5D Mark IIl, 50mm lens
Maria Carolina Castro
Photographer and Geographer
Contact: mariaicarolinac@gmail.com -
Essays of Geography
Vol. 9 No. 18 (2022)COVERLargo do Sol, Ilha da Conceição, Niterói, September 27, 2021.
Another afternoon of September 27th, day of the celebration to Saint Cosme and Damian and known here at Ilha da Conceição as "Candy Getter Day". For the first time I went out on the streets of this neighborhood where I was born, grew up and caught a lot of candy, to photograph the children on the street, with their big backpacks and their hands greasy with sugar.
I have incredible memories of my "candy days" and this date in the year 2021 was very important to me, all the mothers, aunts, and the children themselves posed for pictures and loved the fact that there was someone recording this busy day in the community. I met former teachers, relatives and former friends with their children on the street.
In the middle of the road I met a lady walking with a dog and a cat on a leash, she was dressed in an army camouflage shirt and a blood red skirt. We stopped to talk, and the lady told me that the animals love to walk, that she didn't even live in the neighborhood, and that she was also on the street to watch the children. I told her that when I was a child, I often hitchhiked on buses and vans in the neighborhood to go home to unload my backpack of sweets because I was so tired from running around all day.
As she was directing the little kitten for me to photograph, she asked me not to photograph her face. I leave here my record of this lady who provided me with such an unusual encounter and a click of someone who has walked a lot, but whom I did not expect to find on this sunny day full of children running in the street.
Canon T7, 18-55mm lens
Ariany Fernandes
Photographer
Contact: ariany.contato@gmail.com -
Dossiê Intersectionalities: between knowledges and spaces
Vol. 8 No. 17 (2022)COVER
Another version of human evolution
Laleska Freitas
Intersectionality: when I think of this concept visually I always understand it as a meeting of water, that's why I started this creation with the meeting of the Negro and the Solimões rivers, which generates the famous Amazon. This meeting is the filter on the other illustrations that make up this final artwork.
Other processes led me to find the other parts of the whole. In the search for a female version of the Venusian man, at first to reconstruct the image of modern perfection, I found the black Venus (symbolic?). Faced with this beautiful Venus, however, my plans changed and I began to represent the water encounters that form humanity. Look for images of human evolution, of our species: it is always white men walking towards the future. With the artwork that is on the cover of this dossier I wanted to show other facets of our human evolution, the ones that contributed so much for us to have this socio-spatial composition today.
Provoking the West, I use an image of a pilgrimage through the desert referring to the Arabs of North Africa to signify both this evolutionary path and the Arab contribution to Western pillars - after all, we would not even have records of many ancient philosophers without the preservation of this knowledge by the Arabs. This element of art also symbolizes the contribution of the East to Western thought, which did not come because a Westerner found a box with a Jinn in it and did not kill it, but rather made a request of it. Here we sought to represent the East without Orientalism (or colonialism).
The indigenous peoples were represented, also contributing to human evolution. An illustration of the Tupinambá indigenous group was used to punctuate my position, since I am a carioca, a descendant of Tupi speaking indigenous people from the coast of Rio de Janeiro, and this is the only information I know about this part of my ancestry because of centuries of deindividualization in Brazil. But this illustration seeks to represent all the native peoples of the world, whether from Africa, Oceania or another continent, because they have also contributed to human evolution.
The black woman at the center, who appears in a re-reading of the Western ideal of beauty, is both a reminder of humanity's moral ancestry, linked to the African continent, and a highlight of the contribution of African peoples and the African diaspora to human evolution. Although colonial views of history limit the African Diaspora as descendants of slaves, let's not forget that many inventions, knowledge that contributed to various sciences (architecture, medicine, etc.) and even aesthetic areas came from African people, as in Ancient Egypt and the nations that forcibly migrated to America and contributed to building the societies that exist there today.
A parenthesis before concluding: human evolution is understood here not as a synonym for improvement, as if what came before was worse, but that which over time was more fruitful, and therefore multiplied more often and was maintained over time, not necessarily being the strongest as Social Darwinism advocates. Evolution relates much more to the archetypes of fecundity and beauty like Oxum and Venus than to the fierce archetypes like Ogum and Mars. And I say this because, although the modern pillars want objectivity and rationalism as paths to the future, evolution was based on seduction and procreation that lead to the predominance of some traits and ideas. But make no mistake: there is something strategic about seduction, so it aggregates both thinking and feeling.
In conclusion, this journey of artistic creation has led me to think of human evolution as an excellent example of intersection. That's what humanity is, a bucket of everything and everything, each element of the bucket with a geographical and historical positionality, all with great destructive and creative potential. An intersectional analysis requires looking at all the factors that contribute to the phenomenon that gives meaning to the research, punctuating their positionalities and their role in the interaction of these factors. It is relevant to science and particularly delightful, because it highlights the multiplicity of everything and everyone, just as in the intersectional creation of human evolution I sought to show the Other side, the one that is multiple and seeks respect for differences.
Photo collage made with Adobe Photoshop CS6.
Laleska Costa de Freitas
Geography teacher for Ensino Fundamental II
Contact: laleskacf@gmail.com -
Essays of Geography
Vol. 8 No. 16 (2022)COVER
Rua Monte Líbano, Teresópolis, Brazil, August 2021.
I see the street as a living organism. Streets are like arteries, hurried pedestrians, loud and noisy cars, children playing, the uncle who sells popsicles? Everything and everyone is an essential part of this urban and human ecosystem that we build without planning and help to maintain every time we leave the private universe of home for the reality of everyday life. It is crazy to think that for some people street and home are the same thing, isn't it? Sidewalks are converted into palanques as easily as they become bedrooms for those who have no choice...
The street is a place of coexistence between opposites, the rich and the poor, the hurried and the idle, the phone booth and the smartphone... The photo shows the ruins of an element that once served as a bridge between relatives, colleagues, lovers... It has already been a bearer of bad news and has already killed longing... Today it serves as shelter from the sun and the rain. Things change, time goes by, the phone becomes a pocket article... We forget, but the street doesn't.
The street remembers.
Canon T7i, 50mm lens
Luke MartinsPhotographer
Contact: stumblerspeaker@hotmail.com
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Essays of Geography
Vol. 8 No. 15 (2021)COVERSanta Teresa, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, November 2020.
Milton Santos famously stated that space can be understood as an unequal accumulation of times, meaning a complex amalgam in which the past is always present. This assertion is especially true and observable in central urban areas: in them, the built environment serves as a sort of testimony of past eras through the historical density of their forms and layouts.
In truth, however, times are not simply accumulated unequally in space. More than that, there is a continuous and uninterrupted interaction between different times that meet in space, essentially dynamic geographical situations in constant transmutation. In these, the marks of previous eras are not crystallized but, rather, continuously (re)framed and (re)adapted. Thus, the functions of spatial forms change, as do the social representations related to them.
The photo seeks to capture such geo-historical dynamism. It portrays, in the foreground, the upper part of the Arcos da Lapa, an old colonial aqueduct dating from the 18th century readapted for the circulation of the famous trams of the Santa Teresa neighborhood. The tracks extend, like a bridge that connects not only different points in space but also yesterday and today, towards the background of the image, in which the EDISE, Petrobras' headquarters dating from the 1970s, stands out, along with other corporate buildings in downtown Rio de Janeiro.
Analog photography - Canon Sure Shot Z155, Kodak Pro Image 100 film.
Vicente Brêtas Gomes dos Santos
Bachelor of Geography (UFF)
Contact: vicente.bretas@gmail.com
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Ensaios de Geografia
Vol. 7 No. 14 (2021)COVERArc de Triomphe Square, Barcelona, Spain, February 2020.
Vitality. Spontaneity. Idealization. Mise-en-scène. These were some of the words used by Ester Limonad, a professor in the Geography department at the Federal University of Fluminense, to describe the city of Barcelona in her article "Strangers in Paradise (Barcelona): Impressions of a Brazilian geographer and architect living in Barcelona."
Ester couldn't have been more accurate.
Experiencing the city of Barcelona is surrendering to the surprises that the streets offer. At every corner, a picturesque frame, a street musician breaking the fast pace of the metropolis, or groups of bewildered tourists seeking information.
Weeks before the pandemic spread across Spain, I experienced what might be considered a "typical Sunday" at the Arc de Triomphe in Barcelona. With its Neo-Mudéjar style, an architectural movement that sought to recover the Mudéjar style practiced on the Iberian Peninsula between the 12th and 16th centuries, the arch, built in 1888, marked the beginning of a wide promenade leading to Ciutadella Park. As I walked, there were children with soap bubbles, musicians singing and playing different instruments, and picnics everywhere.
In late February 2020, when I was there, no one seemed to believe that this crisis, which was already affecting Italy, would reach the country in a few weeks. It wasn't long before Spain imposed a strict lockdown, inaugurating a spirit opposite to that of Barcelona in the country: fear, concern, suppression of experience.
In the absence of urban experiments, Barcelona offered me my last memories of knowing and wandering through a city without feeling fear or apprehension. This city of spectacle was captured in my imagination, as well as in this photograph: a more than idealized way to think about the world before the pandemic.
Analog photography, Kodak Pro Image 100 film.
Victoria Oliva
Bachelor of Geography from the Federal Fluminense University (UFF)
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Essays of Geography
Vol. 7 No. 13 (2021)COVER
Indigenous Land Mãe Maria, located in the municipality of Bom Jesus do Tocantins, in the southeast of the state of Pará, September 2015.
Indigenous Gavião warrior from the Kyikatêjê village participating in the archery game during the September 2015 games. The Gavião indigenous people are composed of three large groups or villages: Parkatêjê, Kyikatêjê, and Akrãtikatêjê, gathered in the Mãe Maria Indigenous Land since the late 1980s. As reported by the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil website: "After a traumatic 'pacification' in the 1970s, during which they lost 70% of their population, the Gaviões overcame the population crisis and rebuilt their way of life." In this context of encounters with the Western world, the Gaviões have been reconstructing their traditions. Among them, the Chestnut Festival, held at the end of each year to celebrate the Brazil nut harvest, and the Log Race as a form of cultural and sporting expression among the Gavião villages in September. It was in this context of the log race that men and women of the people come together to practice their techniques and skills with bow and arrow, a moment that marks a point of meetings, conversations about life, smiles, and freedom of a people who over the last 30 years have been rebuilding and positioning themselves territorially, politically, and culturally in southeastern Pará.
Ginno Pérez Salas Peruvian cholo activist researcher. PhD candidate in the Graduate Program in Geography at the Federal Fluminense University (UFF). Master's degree in Territorial Dynamics and Society in the Amazon at the Federal University of Southern and Southeastern Pará (UNIFESSPA). Contact: driloperez84@gmail.com
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Essays of Geography
Vol. 6 No. 12 (2020)COVER
Amanã Sustainable Development Reserve, Amazonas, Brazil, February 18, 2017
The Amanã Sustainable Development Reserve is the second conservation unit of its kind created in Brazil, in 1998, in the Central Amazon, and is managed by the State Government of Amazonas. It has management structures and shared governance among the state, local communities, and partner institutions. It is located in the middle course of the Solimões River and covers part of the hydrographic basins of the Solimões, Japurá, and Unini rivers. This protected area spans a territorial area of 2.35 million hectares, encompassing floodplain, paleofloodplain, and upland environments. RDS Amanã is one of the protected areas that make up the Lower Rio Negro Mosaic and is part of the Central Amazon Ecological Corridor and the Central Amazon Biosphere Reserve. It is recognized as a Natural World Heritage Site by UNESCO (Central Amazon Protected Areas Complex) and as a Site of International Importance under the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands (Rio Negro). This sustainable use conservation unit is home to over five thousand residents and users whose main activities for self-sustenance and commercialization include fishing, family farming, and extractivism. RDS Amanã is territorially organized into sectors that aggregate communities and establish forms and strategies for the use and management of natural resources. The cover photograph of this edition was taken in the Castanha sector, one of the 11 sectors that this unit has. It portrays the typical floating houses of the region, which are strategic for inhabiting these environments that are seasonally affected by river flooding. The photograph was taken during a trip to conduct a workshop with local communities aimed at providing social organization advice for natural resource management and mediating conflicts over the use and ownership of lakes designated for fishing activities. During this opportunity, among the different activities and tools used to support the workshop, participatory mapping was used for the territory use diagnosis with the user communities.
Caetano Franco Bachelor of Geography from the Federal University of Alfenas/MG, Brazil; Advanced Studies in Protected Areas Management from Colorado State University/CO, USA; and Master's in Protected Areas Management in the Amazon from the National Institute of Amazonian Research/AM, Brazil. Contact: caetanolbfranco@gmail.com
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Essays of Geography
Vol. 4 No. 8 (2015) -
Essays of Geography
Vol. 4 No. 7 (2015) -
Essays of Geography
Vol. 3 No. 6 (2014) -
Essays of Geography
Vol. 3 No. 5 (2014) -
Essays of Geography
Vol. 2 No. 4 (2013) -
Essays of Geography
Vol. 2 No. 3 (2013) -
Essays of Geography
Vol. 1 No. 2 (2012) -
Essays of Geography
Vol. 1 No. 1 (2012)
