Arpoador


Ponta do Arpoador is, in my opinion, one of the coolest places in Rio de Janeiro. There you have the beach
(actually, some beaches: Diabo Beach, Arpoador Beach and the Fort Copacabana beaches), the ocean,
a sunset many times applauded by people, and the rock that allows us going into the ocean without having
to get our feet wet. I like to say that's the best place in the world.

Arpoador is located between Copacabana and Ipanema, two very busy neighborhoods. But, despite that, the
atmosphere there is very peaceful and quiet. It is as if the city would pass around it, in a hurry, ignoring that
tip of land or being ignored by it. It gets busy only on summer weekends, due to a great number of beach
goers coming from all parts of town. But the beach is a democratic leisure, that everyone can enjoy, and, until
now nobody had the unfortunate idea of charging some kind of "beach fee".

While working on an exhibition about Arpoador I looked for pictures through my archives and went there many
times to take more pictures. In this search for images to try to show Arpoador, or perhaps to actually show
"my" Arpoador, one of the things that always came into my mind was to find local characters: surfers, boys
from Morro do Pavão - a nearby slum, riding waves, street vendors, clam catchers, fishermen, the sunny
weekend crowd. But once the pictures were taken and chosen, I realized that I wasn't able to focus neither
on the locals nor on a particular Arpoador character, at least not in a way that pleased me.

The whole set of pictures seemed good to me and the images were pretty. But where were the characters?
There was something missing! Why did the chosen pictures didn't highlight people or a group of locals at
Arpoador? Would it be by any chance the same old problem I had of approaching people and gaining their
confidence before taking their picture? That's one of the answers since that's always a barrier to overcome.

In a certain point of that process I started to realize that on the pictures chosen there was something that
already stood out and had so to speak a very strong personality: It was Arpoador itself with its beaches,
the rock and the ocean. From there on everything became crystal clear and the chosen pictures started to fit
as if by magic. Ponta do Arpoador was the character I've been looking for and, without even noticing it, I had
already found long before.

But what about the people? Well... the people are part of the scenario and maybe that's one of the things that
makes Arpoador such a special place. There's a little magic about it. There we feel embraced by nature and a
part of it. We fee l nature's strength and wilderness, and we feel small, but never diminished. On the contrary,
at Arpoador we feel great, happy and peaceful.