to walk
in the frequency of slowness and curiosity: to walk |1
In this set we present photographs created using digital cameras taken by five years and eleven months old children and younger who attend the public schools CEI and EMEI from the Alvarenga CEU |2, “Pedreira” neighborhood, in São Paulo south district. These images are a result of the project “Olhar sobre a cidade: fotografia e desenho na construção de imagens sobre São Paulo a partir das escolas municipais de educação infantil” |3. There were hundreds of images, and some of them were chosen with the intention to make us think about conceptions and representations elaborated by the children about the neighborhood and other locations where they live or experiment and construct their daily life. These images are a product of walks throughout locations previously planned by children and adult women – teachers, administrator, researchers – who accompanied the project. Even though there were those planned paths, they were altered by the mere act of walking and interests raised in the moment. As Francesco Careri says, it is important to face the stop as a part of the walking, and so we did.
In this set we have photos taken by the children at a grove situated behind the Alvarenga CEU, mostly frequented by teenagers and adults. Alongside these photographs, we have another set derived from walks throughout the neighborhood streets and inside the CEU itself. Photography is undoubtedly an instrument that makes us think. In this set we propose and invite you to reflect, based upon images about the city, about the kids that create works of art daily.
The children were paired and shared a digital camera accordingly with their individual intent to photograph. That happened in the year of 2012. They are pictures of the common things in the “Pedreira” neighborhood: bars, doors of houses, aquariums with fishes, stuffed animals disposed off by someone and rediscovered by the children, among many others, following the intent of the photographer children.
The images resonate differently among different people, at different ages, who access them. The intention is to think of the city in its countless relationships, locations and social practices with images produced by the children and to let that spread out to different locations and provoke other thoughts and desires, including the claim for the possibility of walking, pausing, looking. Walking throughout the streets with the children is to open yourself to the possibility to know each street, each encountered person: grandparents, parents, friends.
Marcia Gobbi
1| Originally: Na frequência da lentidão e da curiosidade: caminhar.
2| CEI: Centro de Educação Infantil, lit. Child Education Center. EMEI: Escola Municipal de Educação Infantil, lit. Municipal Pre-School. CEU: Centro de Educação Unificado, lit. Unified Education Center.
3| lit. View over the city: photography and drawing in the construction of images about São Paulo from the child education municipal schools.
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