This page brings some selected photos of two trips I made in 2018 on the EFVM trains: Vitória-Minas Railroad.
In the first trip (Sept 18-23/2018), I covered the 664 km that separate Vitória (ES) from Belo Horizonte (MG). From Vitoria, I and my companion, also photographer, from Campinas (SP), João Ferreira, made 1-2 day stops in the cities of Colatina (ES), Itapina (ES), Aimorés (MG) and Ipatinga (MG).
On the second trip (Oct 23-26/2018), in which I was alone, I traveled the round trip between Belo Horizonte and Rio Piracicaba (both in Minas Gerais state) of only 70-80 km. I stayed in this little and charming city during the whole period.
Photographically speaking, these trips provide unforgettable experiences and I strongly recommend them. The small cities where the train passes have a lifestyle of an ancient Brazil, of great tranquility that is found in few regions of this country.
In the different sections of these trips, the EFVM train wagons are populated by humble but good-hearted people. We hear stories of the most varied, peculiar, passionately poetic.
This trip evoked in me an authentic feeling that was transmitted in the poem of Fernando Brant, great poet of Minas Gerais, called ‘Meetings and farewells’. This poem is the lyrics of a song by Milton Nascimento, one of the greatest singers of Brazilian Popular Music (MPB). It’s a beautiful song from a beautiful poem.
Life in these small stations of these small towns where this train comes and goes daily is the life of these places. This feeling provoked in me the desire to initiate a photographic project to which I gave the name of the poem mentioned above.
I hope to be doing more trips on the EFVM trains in the future and, who knows, someday I will have a coherent volume of photographs that evoke the theme of this project.
First trip (Sept 18-23/2018):
Second trip (Oct 23-26/2018):
The following photographs are portraits taken in the city of Rio Piracicaba, MG-Brazil. Some of them are from a Quilombola community of Caxambú (Rio Piracicaba district). It is a small Quilombola group, dispersed between the countryside and the small town of Caxambu. But they are very united and active in the organization of the Congado annual festival, a folkloric activity very rich in its tradition in this region of Brazil.
Antonio Mozeto 