The Brazilian Photographs Of Genevieve Naylor 1940-1942

Genevieve Naylor, a photojournalist previously employed by the Associated Press and the WPA, was sent to Brazil in 1940 to provide photographs that would support United States government's  need for propaganda to portray Brazil as a wartime ally. Often balking at her mundane assignments, an independent-minded Naylor produced something far different and far more rich - a stunning collection of over a thousand photographs that document a rarely seen period in Brazilian history. Accompanied by analysis from Robert M. Levine, this selection of Naylor's photographs offers a unique view of everyday life during one of modern Brazil's least-examined decades. Travelling beyond the fashionable neighbourhoods of Rio de Janeiro, she conveys in her work the excitement of an outside observer for whom all is fresh and new. Her subjects include the very rich and the very poor, black Carnival dancers, fishermen, rural peasants from the interior, workers crammed into trolleys - ordinary Brazilians in their own setting - rather than simply Brazilian symbols of progress as required by the dictatorship or a population viewed as exotic Latins for the consumption of North American travellers.