Brazil's football obsession will be a global focus when it hosts the 2014 FIFA World Cup, starting on June 12, but behind the country's multi-millionnaire players, iconic clubs and shiny new stadiums is a thriving grassroots game.
It is this street football, played by children with worn-out balls, on dusty ground and against walls in the slums of Rio de Janeiro and other cities, that inspired a photographic project which gives these young players a chance to show their love of the game.
It was started by Christophe Simon, chief photographer in Brazil with the news agency AFP. When covering the pacification of Rio's often violent favelas, or slum areas, by security forces, he was struck by how interested young people were in the work of a photojournalist.
"Laden with the cameras, I would go through the favela to follow the progress of the police and army through sordid little streets. I was constantly followed by crowds of kids who seemed really interested in my work, following me everywhere, asking me countless questions," Simon said.
"In 2001, I turned 50, an age when you want to pass on your knowledge and experience to younger people. That is how I came up with the idea for this project."
Simon enlisted the support of camera manufactuter Nikon and Rio's Lentos dos Sonhos photography school, and last year went to Rio with Brazilian photographer Tony Barros, who helped him find children aged 10 to 15 willing to join the project.
Supplied with 10 Coolpix waterproof cameras by Nikon and under the guidance of Simon and Barros, the youngsters spent day after day capturing their lives on camera, with football as the theme.
Simon said the result has been a series of striking images. "I was amazed that these children were able to produce such good photographs. If I had been working on this theme, I would have only been able to use my professional technique and my trained eye.
"But these children were able to show where they lived and where their passion for football came from. The result is more than honest."
AFP will continue the project by running a photography workshop for children from the slum areas up to the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio. It will be financed mainly from sales of the photos, which are available on the news agency's platform Image Forum, in partnership with the NGO Casa Geracao, which helps poor Brazilian children find careers through the fashion industry.
(AFP / Kauan Oliveira de Lima)
(AFP / Silvana)
(AFP / Joyce)
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AFP photographerChristopheSimonand his studentsof the favelaCidadede Deus (City of God). (AFP /YasuyoshiChiba)
