Brazil’s Nordeste was written about in the 1990s as one of the poorest regions in the world. What travelers find out is that photographs in the middle of poverty risk looking “quaint” and “charming,” losing that feeling of desolation that we felt there. That seems to be the case looking at this shot 22 years later.
Though it is still Brazil’s poorest area — and in particular the state of Pernambuco, where I took this picture — it is doing significantly better nowadays.
