Dayane Cortez
A
challenge I overcame: To graduate and know a little of the world, where not everything is to my taste
A dream
for my future: A tranquil life with many friends.
A hope for the global community: More love, more peace, more compassionate people.
Dayane was my afternoon teacher for the
first two weeks at Step 1 and what a brilliant lady! With Italian heritage herself,
Dayane and I spoke a lot about Brazil’s hugely mixed ethnic roots. The Portuguese influx that founded modern
Brazil was particularly notable in the town San Antonio de Lisboa that Dayane
took Brook, Urs and myself to for a variation on the classroom setting one
afternoon. There were also waves of
German and Italian immigration at the end of the 19th century, and
despite repression of the two languages during the years of the Brazilian
dictatorship, there are still towns that are mainly German or mainly Italian
today, and there has been a resurgence of language preservation in recent years. It is also more common for Brazilians of dual
heritage to hold the second passport, like Dayane’s Italian one, which has already
allowed her to travel easily visa-wise in Europe. Apparently Germany normally only allows
second generation immigrants to claim their German descendency, but taking into
account the dictatorship they apparently allow Brazilians an exception of up to
5th generation passport claims.
Dayane also told me about a fascinating
language experience that she had in working alongside a Guaraní language
professor to set entrance exam questions for entry to the Guaraní
university. Apparently the questions
were culturally so heavily occidental because of being set in Portuguese that
many of their concepts were not translatable into Guaraní. Words such as ‘house’ and ‘space’ do not
exist, for example, because for the Guaraní people all spaces are home, the
whole world is home. What a beautiful
concept.
In a couple of our lessons we looked at
articles about a couple of interesting Brazilian artists including Sebastião
Salgado, Vinícius de Morais and the São Paolo Recycling Institute:
The famous Brazilian photographer from
Minas Gerias, who according to the article we studied in our lesson, started out his career studying economics and came to
photography after borrowing his wife’s camera for a business trip to
London. After a later trip to Angola
concentrating on the coffee culture Salgado moved completely to photography and
in 1979 he became famous for being the only photographer to capture images of
the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan.
From the 70’s onwards Salgado continued to
travel and take photographs concentrating on the often-extreme living and
working conditions of communities in South America and Africa in
particular. Some of his major projects
are:
OutrasAmericas, 1986: Photos documenting the living
conditions of country folk and Indians taken on his travels throughout Latin
America from 1977 to ’84.
El Fin Del Camino, Images taken during 15 months working
alongside Doctors without Borders in the Saraha in Africa, documenting the
devastation of the drought and the impact on local people.
Trabalhadores,1986-1992: Images documenting the harsh living and
working conditions of workers around the world.
Retratosde Crianças do Exodo: Images exploring the global
phenomenon of mass displacement of masses of people.
la Pionera (photo from image search)
Famous Brazilian poet, whose ever-growing
house grabbed my attention when we read about it during one of my classes. ‘Casapueblo’, in Punta Ballena in Uruguay,
was founded by Morais and his friend Carlos Paez Vileró in 1958.
Starting out as a simple tin house “La Pionera”, ever year a new room or
two are added, until now, 80 years on there are over 70 rooms, many named after
the famous guests that have stayed there, including Rober de Niro, Brigette
Bardot and Omar Sherif among others.
One day educator João da Cruz found a
mysterious box of torn up US dollars on the doorstep of the institute, that he
incorporated into the recycling project.
Dayane and I questioned why there would even be a box of torn up
dollars, and wouldn’t those dollars have been more useful for the Institute if
they hadn’t been torn.
Dayane, muito muito obrigado por todos as aulas tão interessante, e as afora da sala, foram todos muito legal e estimulante!
Que desfrute os seus projetos de fotografia, e todos viagens que vêm.
Um abraço
:-)
Muito obrigada por me permitir participar. Que bom que pude contribuir em algo com sua passagem por aqui.
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