**"Back to Black - Pacto de Senzala (Slave Quarters Pact)"**
This series of 14 images combines black-and-white documentary photography with vibrant flags of African nations. The photographs were taken during a February 2022 protest in São Paulo against the brutal murder of Moïse Kabagambe, a Congolese political refugee who worked at a kiosk in Rio de Janeiro’s Barra da Tijuca.
This series of 14 images combines black-and-white documentary photography with vibrant flags of African nations. The photographs were taken during a February 2022 protest in São Paulo against the brutal murder of Moïse Kabagambe, a Congolese political refugee who worked at a kiosk in Rio de Janeiro’s Barra da Tijuca.
During my coverage of the protest—attended by Black movements, collectives, organizations, and leaders, as well as immigrants and refugees—I chose to photograph people *from behind*, rendering them anonymous yet unmistakably unified by their turbans, Afro-textured hair, and dark skin. Their postures of grief and rage seemed to embody Moïse’s presence within each of them, even as the crowd filled São Paulo’s Avenida Paulista. My lens focused on their collective **"pact"**—a bond forged in shared pain—while indicting a society that turns its back on Black lives.
In post-processing, I stripped away the backgrounds, isolating the figures and overlaying them with flags of African countries. These nations were selected based on two criteria: those from which the largest numbers of people were abducted during the transatlantic slave trade, and sub-Saharan countries still impoverished by colonial exploitation and global economic subjugation.
The series opens with the flag of Congo—Moïse’s homeland—displayed on a protester’s shirt bearing his face. It closes with an elder woman, fist raised defiantly, superimposed on Brazil’s flag. This framing ties past to present, suggesting that confronting history can empower us to reshape the future.
**"Back to Black - Pacto de Senzala"** traces intersecting journeys, centuries of recurring trauma, and diasporic subjects bound by ancestry, resistance, memory, and blood. Whether Brazilian or not, genocide targets all who are Black.
**Technical Details:**
- 14 photographs, each 67.5 cm (width) × 90 cm (height).
- Flags represented: Congo, Angola, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Benin, Mozambique, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Gabon, Senegal, South Sudan, Ghana, Togo, and Brazil.
- Over 12 million enslaved Africans were trafficked to the Americas from these regions, with 40% arriving in Brazil—the series’ closing symbol.
- 14 photographs, each 67.5 cm (width) × 90 cm (height).
- Flags represented: Congo, Angola, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Benin, Mozambique, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Gabon, Senegal, South Sudan, Ghana, Togo, and Brazil.
- Over 12 million enslaved Africans were trafficked to the Americas from these regions, with 40% arriving in Brazil—the series’ closing symbol.
**The Pacto de Senzala:**
As defined by the late Letieres Leite—educator, composer, and conductor of the *Orquestra Rumpilezz*—this "pact" emerged aboard slave ships and later in sugarcane plantations and *senzalas* (slave quarters). Enslaved Africans from diverse tribes forged a cultural, musical, and social alliance for survival, laying the groundwork for a post-African culture: Brazilian identity itself.
As defined by the late Letieres Leite—educator, composer, and conductor of the *Orquestra Rumpilezz*—this "pact" emerged aboard slave ships and later in sugarcane plantations and *senzalas* (slave quarters). Enslaved Africans from diverse tribes forged a cultural, musical, and social alliance for survival, laying the groundwork for a post-African culture: Brazilian identity itself.
**Title’s Double Meaning:**
"Back to Black" translates ambiguously. It critiques a society that ignores Black struggles (*"turning its back on Blackness"*) while honoring a people reclaiming roots to fight for citizenship and life (*"returning to Blackness"*). Today, unity in struggle is the **Pacto de Senzala** we, as Black people, must renew.
"Back to Black" translates ambiguously. It critiques a society that ignores Black struggles (*"turning its back on Blackness"*) while honoring a people reclaiming roots to fight for citizenship and life (*"returning to Blackness"*). Today, unity in struggle is the **Pacto de Senzala** we, as Black people, must renew.
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