In this series of photographs, Brazilian-born photographer Pedro Lobo, documents the favelas or shanty towns in Rio de Janeiro. The favelas in Rio are the longest-lived squatter settlements in the world. There are about one billion squatters worldwide, one million of which are in Rio de Janeiro. The people that live in the favelas do not have access to proper sanitation or power.

Lobo’s photographic landscapes hint at the organized chaos as homes scale the hills. The photographs capture the hardening of these urban spaces as people put down roots and community develops. These beautifully composed images do not shy away from the sprawl, or the hardships of the favelas, yet they are filled with optimism necessary for life in these marginalized urban neighborhoods. These images attempt to show the human dignity of the “favela” dwellers, in spite of all the difficulties faced by those who have no other choice but to live in these excluded communities.

Pedro Lobo is a Fulbright scholar who has studied at the International Center of Photography, NYC, and at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Over the 1970s and 1980s, Lobo was a photographer and researcher at Brazil’s National Center for Cultural Reference and at the Monuments and Sites National Institute. He photographed the historical sites of Ouro Preto, Olinda, Salvador, and São Miguel das Missões for their inclusion in UNESCO’s World Heritage List. Lobo works to show the viewer aspects overlooked in the landscape where individual expression and social processes mark places for his large format camera. Pedro Lobo lives in Rio de Janeiro and Évora, Portugal. He won 1st prize for the photographs in this exhibition in the TOPS IN International Photo Festival in Shenyang, China.