FGV CPDOC photo essay wins 2024 Pierre Verger Award

Fundação Getulio Vargas’ School of Social Sciences (FGV CPDOC) came first in the 2024 Pierre Verger Awards in the Photographic Essays category, based on the photo essay “Mirrors of Memory: Archival Images and the Recovery of the Past.” The images were produced as part of a project called “Indigenous Document Heritage: Collaborative Work Between FGV CPDOC and the Apinajé People.”

The award-winning photo essay was produced by research assistant Laura Guimarães; the co-coordinator of FGV CPDOC’s Audiovisual and Documentary Center, Gabriel Cardoso; and student Andressa Iremex Apinajé, who is doing a master’s in cultural heritage and social projects. They were all present the awards ceremony, which took place during the opening session of the 34th Brazilian Anthropology Meeting, at Cine Theatro Brazil Vallourec in Belo Horizonte.

The awards, organized by the Brazilian Anthropology Association, aim to celebrate films, photographic essays and drawings that engage in dialogue and experimentation with images, sounds, gestures and movements through the processes and results of anthropological and ethnographic research.

According to the dean of FGV CPDOC, Celso Castro, this achievement represents notable public recognition of the positive impact that FGV has sought to achieve through this project in partnership with the Apinajé people. “This important award reinforces the commitment we have established with the Apinajé people, to collaboratively transform the document collection we received into something living, dynamic and full of meaning, both for us and for them,” he said.

Mirrors of Memory

The winning photo essay exalts memories and ancestry through its images. In the 1960s and 1970s, anthropologist Roberto DaMatta carried out fieldwork with the Apinajé people, and in 2022 he donated his personal archive related to this work to FGV CPDOC.

More than 40 years later, the award-winning essay recorded the Apinajé people’s encounter with their images, seeking to reflect on the transformation of the collection based on different subjectivities and how it seems to unfold from them.

Awards ceremony

There were 55 nominees for the 2024 Pierre Verger Awards (27 films, 20 photographic works and 8 drawings). Exhibitions, workshops and conferences were held prior to the awards ceremony, led by authorities in the field of anthropology, including Ailton Krenak, Olinda Tupinambá, Faye Ginsburg (an anthropologist at NYU), Pegi Vail (also an anthropologist at NYU) and Isabel Noronha (a filmmaker from Mozambique).

To see the award-winning photo essay, click here.

To find out the winners of the other categories and other nominated works, click here.