Slaves at a coffee yard in a farm. Vale do Paraiba, Sao Paulo, 1882.Marc Ferrez/Moreira Salles Institute Archive
Brazil was the last place in the Americas to abolish slavery — it didn’t happen until 1888 — and that meant that the final years of the practice were photographed.
This has given Brazil what may be the world’s largest archive of photography of slavery, and a new exhibition in Sao Paulo is offering some new insights into the country’s brutal past. A decade of latent Violence towards the African Slaves and beginging of rebellion and a revolutionary war with the slaves. After Princess Isabel signed the Abolition act she fled into exile to France.
Lilia Schwarcz says the slave system was based on violence, and the photos, when when viewed closely, show just how violent that system could be. Whats astounding about the exhibition is the variety of situations that slaves were photographed in: not only in the fields but in their owners’ homes, in the city and taking care of the white children of their masters.
One of the most striking images is of a white woman sitting in a litter. The two slaves that would carry her through the streets of the city are standing next to her. One looks down, in deference. The other man is leaning against the litter, his hat tipped at a jaunty angle, staring straight at the camera.
“He’s showing himself, and saying ‘I’m not just like this, I’m another thing. I’m something different. I’m something else,” Schwarcz says.
A detail from a photo of slaves going to the coffee harvest with oxcar. Vale do Paraiba, Sao Paulo, 1885.
Moreira Salles Institute Archive
Opening New Discussions
The images in the exhibition were taken from 1860 to 1885. Slavery ended in Brazil in 1888, and the photos also reveal a tricky and difficult moment for slave owners in Brazil, says Maria Helena Machado, a historian who also contributed to the exhibition.
“It was almost the end of the slave system in Brazil, but those owners … they wanted very much to keep the slave system,” Machado says.
Machado says the late 19th century was even more brutal than before because, with slavery about to end, owners wanted to get as much as they could in terms of slave work. “They are not concerned anymore about surviving, so who cares? ‘I need to get my money back,'” she says.
A lady with two slaves, in Bahia, Brazil, 1860.
Moreira Salles Institute Archive
Machado says many slaves were running away, while others had formed armed bands and were revolting. The enlarged images show the look in the eyes of the slaves. The battle, says Lilia Schwarcz, is very evident.
“They were fighting for their freedom,” she says. “So you have here a discussion about freedom.”
A discussion that curator Sergio Burgi says continues today, with the people who have come to see the exhibition. “People here in Brazil have reacted in very interesting ways saying ‘Oh that reminds me of my time as a kid, and I used to live in a rural area and everything looked similar,'” he says
Burgi says even decades after slavery, blacks lived in the same conditions, and that legacy continues to resonate today.
