2007 Portfolio Prize Winner: Julio Bittencourt

The residents of 911 Prestes Maia Avenue, a twenty-two-story ramshackle apartment tower located in the center of sprawling São Paulo, Brazil, were surprised to learn in March 2006 that they were to be evicted within twenty-eight days. After all, the building had loomed conspicuously empty for over a decade, neglected by its tax-delinquent landlord; in 2003, a coalition of housing activists calling themselves Movement of the Homeless from Downtown had organized hundreds of homeless families who moved into the capacious tower. After the new residents successfully drove out the vermin and the drug dealers, and cleaned up the place, the building became home for 1,630 people, including some 468 families with 315 children. Prestes Maia was more than likely the largest squat in South America, complete with a library and a site for workshops and other educational activities. As of May 2007, only a quarter of the original residents are still living in Prestes Maia, most having moved to public housing complexes far from downtown. For those who remain, the future is uncertain. 

Photographer Julio Bittencourt first became aware of the plight of Prestes Maia’s inhabitants through a journalist-friend who was writing a story on their situation. Already interested in issues related to land distribution and urban gentrification in Brazil, the story was a natural fit for him. Bittencourt’s formally consistent photographs artfully capture the tower’s occupants as they appear in weathered window frames, revealing a diverse community. According to Bittencourt, in a mega-city like São Paulo, where large buildings are packed together cheek by jowl, families and friends often communicate with each other through windows. Photographing from the adjacent building, Bittencourt conveys this sense of urban density that fosters a unique sense of community, multiple stories above the cacophony of city life below. He writes that ultimately his intention was to “show a symbolic and a physical barrier, the decay of the construction materials, the dignity of the people who survive living amongst those materials, and the overall decay of a system that doesn’t integrate its inhabitants into society but moves away from them.”

Julio Bittencourt (b. 1981) lives in São Paulo. His current projects include documenting the subway of São Paulo and its outskirts as well as a larger project on South America. His photographs have been featured in Foto8 and ZoneZero, among other publications.