Coletivo
FotoFlores
Ocupação Flores do Campo is one of 279 unfinished projects under Minha Casa, Minha Vida – Brazil's largest housing program. Located in Londrina, southern Brazil, it was occupied by unhoused families in 2016 after the Government halted the enterprise due to being suspected of misusing public funds by the hired construction company.
Since then, the neighborhood has been stigmatized by the press as a hub of criminality, fueling police repression and an ongoing eviction process. Nearly a thousand families, half of them Latin American immigrants, are facing eviction while striving for dignity – a reality shared by 16.4 million Brazilians living in favelas.
In 2019, I founded a photography collective, FotoFlores, with young residents. Together, we work to inform and amplify the voices of the community to reshape public opinion, defending the act of occupying as a legitimate tool to bring the constitutional right to housing into reality.
+ about
Coletivo
FotoFlores
The Coletivo FotoFlores was created in 2019 by a group of teenagers from the Ocupação Flores do Campo – along with the photographer Gabriel Melhado. It is a space for experimentation, for creating bonds and roots, ties of friendship, and self-discovery.
Our purpose is to honor the history of the Ocupação Flores do Campo and the struggle of our community, and contribute to the development of the neighborhood on various fronts: challenging narratives that criminalize the Ocupação, offering education and art to the community, building bridges between the city center and the periphery, and weaving a support network around our community. These are ways to reinforce the act of squatting as a legitimate tool for defending our rights to housing, education, and culture. We are here to stay, and our eyes are set on the future.
Over the years, dozens of young people of different ages have been part of the Coletivo FotoFlores. Some have been with us since the beginning; others join for a few weeks, leave, and come back. It is a living organism that expands and contracts, breathes, always in motion, always under construction. We are planting seeds, and the flowers are beginning to bloom.
The struggle continues. We’ll be there, with a camera in hand.
+ about
Ocupação
Flores do Campo
LONDRINA | BRAZIL
The Ocupação Flores do Campo was originally a project under Minha Casa, Minha Vida – the largest housing program in Brazilian history – located in Londrina, southern Brazil. A decade ago, the Federal Government hired a foreign construction company to lead the project. Contracts were signed, money was paid and construction began, but soon an investigation revealed systematic violations of the project and signs of public fund misuse. The project was halted. Dreams were halted.
The neighborhood stood half-built, lifeless, until the people dared to fulfill its intended destiny with its own hands: in October 2016, families from Londrina facing extreme poverty organized themself, occupied, and made this place home.
+ exposição
On October 5, 2024, we opened the exhibition Movimento em Construção ("Movement Under Construction") at the Flores do Campo Occupation Community Cultural Center, a space built by the FotoFlores Collective with support from the residents' association. Funded by a grant from Londrina's Department of Culture, the exhibition showcased photographs from FotoFlores' five years of activity, portraying the everyday life of the Occupation.
The production was carried out by the Collective itself through training workshops with photography professionals that covered topics such as exhibition and curatorial design (by Department of Visual Arts at UEL - DaP/UEL), design (by Lasca Studio), press training and critical media analysis (by Prof. Gabriel Ruiz and Danylo Álvares). After its debut at Flores do Campo, the exhibition traveled to Canto do Marl and finally to DaP/UEL, other significant cultural spaces in Londrina.
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