DAY 13 - ALGODÕES EM AZUL

Portraits of a neighborhood and the time of blue

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Algodões em Azul at Bar da Toinha

Algodões em Azul, held in December 2025 at Bar da Toinha, began in a simple way, almost without the intention of becoming an exhibition.

Our temporary home — where we are living while the Tetéia residency is being built — is next to the bar, in a small village where almost everyone belongs to the same family — siblings, cousins, uncles. We are outsiders, but that condition gradually dissolves in everyday life: a greeting turns into a conversation, a conversation turns into presence.

That’s how Alice and Melissa, both 6 years old, began to spend time at our house. They came to draw, play, and hang around. Little by little, this coexistence with them opened a path toward a closer relationship with the neighborhood.

Alice is Toinha’s daughter, the owner of the bar — a place that holds something rare around here: a convergence of people. Those born here or in the region, others who arrived later, like us — families, workers, tourists. A real sense of flow.

The initial idea was to photograph only Alice and Melissa.

On the day, we asked their mothers to let their hair loose. Both have afro hair — a strong and beautiful inheritance, but one that is still often the target of comments and everyday forms of racial bias in children’s lives. Nancy, my partner, also has afro hair and, in her relationship with the girls, constantly reinforces a sense of pride. The request came from there, from a simple gesture of care and affirmation.

We set up in the alley beside the bar, a corridor that runs through the village. We brought a camera, lighting, and a seamless backdrop. Not so different from a photography studio — except under the open air.

Alice in the first image. In the second, Melissa with her father, Ninho.

As we were photographing, other children started to appear. Then came parents, neighbors, curious onlookers. Some just watched, others wanted to participate. Before we realized it, the shoot was no longer just about the girls.

The images began to emerge. Each portrait came from a natural proximity, from whoever happened to be there and chose to step in.

From the beginning, there was a quiet care: not to turn that coexistence into mere material.

The images are not born from an idea of documenting those people, but from a relationship already in progress. There wasn’t much to seek — the presences, gestures, ways of being were already there, unfolding.

Zóio Portrait

Perhaps the work was more about accompanying than producing.

This way of working has also guided what we have been building with Teteia: a practice that approaches slowly, that listens, that participates, without needing to impose itself or reorganize what already exists.

Cyanotype came later, almost as a continuation of that rhythm.

It is an old, handcrafted photographic printing technique based on the chemical combination of iron salts that produce Prussian blue pigment. It depends on light, on preparing the digital negative, on getting the exposure time right, and on washing with water to reveal the image. It is not immediate, it does not respond quickly. Each image requires care, a certain waiting.

This slower time resonates with what happened there. The image stops being just a record and becomes a process — something that is built gradually, with small variations, without total control. The deep blue of cyanotype does not function as an effect; it creates a slight displacement, a gentle distance from everyday life, without breaking from it. People remain recognizable, but there is another layer present — quieter.

I have become increasingly interested in these processes in which photography does not end at the moment of capture — where it gains body, materiality, time.

Nancy holding Zóio’s cyanotype portrait in the first image, Nancy’s cyanotype portrait in the center image, and Kaely holding her own portrait in the third.

Finally, the exhibition took place at Bar da Toinha itself.

The images returned to the place they came from. They were seen by those who were there that day, by those who were portrayed, by those who followed everything closely.

With the portraits on the walls, conversations began to emerge here and there — someone recognized themselves, called another person over, commented. The families portrayed were also there, seeing themselves, pointing at the images, sharing stories. Everything unfolded with the naturalness of an everyday gathering, without the ceremonies and typical mannerisms of art openings in museums and galleries. Because it was not exactly an “opening,” nor an event separate from the life of the place; it was more of a continuation — perhaps one of the few exhibition experiences in the community, built with the active presence of those who live there, not only as an audience, but as part of the process.

In Algodões em Azul, the work is sustained in this slower rhythm, where relationships take shape without effort and images emerge as a consequence, not as a starting point.

The girls still come over to draw and play. Bar da Toinha continues to operate. Conversations continue. The images remain as a kind of light memory — not to conclude, but to stay alongside what is still unfolding in Algodões.