WE ARE FAMILY

Family beyond blood ties extends into peripheral housing, where tangled wires, makeshift rigs, and clustered structures tell the story of how everything there connects and leans on one another to survive.

WE ARE FAMILY is an ongoing essay in which I document the intricate improvisations of survival within Brazilian peripheries. These homes, layered upon one another within the same plot of land, drive my search to visualize makeshift structures, density in its multiple dimensions, and the creative capacity of families who, in the face of scarcity, transform the little they have into shelter. Here, the concept of "family" transcends bloodlines, extending to the very objects and improvisations themselves. Tangled wires, makeshift rigs, and piled-up shapes tell the story of how everything there connects and leans on one another to survive.

Yet, through this architecture of improvisation, I observe an alarming macroeconomic and social reality: the unbridgeable chasm between peripheral demographic growth and the deliberate absence of public policies. This environment of constant vulnerability stifles the subjectivity of residents, generating a chronic lack of perspective. When daily life is a constant battle for subsistence, dreaming of a better future becomes an inaccessible luxury.

Thus, in documenting this environment, I understand that my role is not merely to capture precariousness, but to seize the resilience and vitality of that community. Every detail salvaged from the ground, every crack in the walls, and every body squeezed onto a sofa are, to me, parts of a single living chronicle, revealing that the space itself pulses like a collective family body.

Although this essay is in its early stages, I seek to translate the abyss between the absence of public policies and the poetic power created by the residents. May this record be not the echo of an endless urgency, but the announcement of a territory emancipated and dignified.