Lost Photos of Brazil's Wild Carnivals

This article originally appeared on VICE Brazil.

In Brazil, 1934 was a wild year. Populist Getúlio Vargas was president. Women had just acquired the right to vote. And ABA Film, one of the most notorious photo studios in Fortaleza, the capital city in the northeastern Brazilian state of Ceará, was founded.

As always, these shifting cultural trends were reflected in a rapturous Carnival, the annual festival that combines African, Indigenous, and European customs and officially marks the beginning of Lent.

In the 1970s, ABA Film's studio became cramped and filled with old photos of past Carnivals. In order to free up some space, they decided to trash precious historic images. That's when journalist Miguel Angelo de Azevedo, also known as "Nirez," came along.

At the time, Nirez wrote a column for a local paper in which he compared old pictures of Fortaleza with current ones, building a small historic arsenal. He decided to accept a donation of photographic files that he's kept through the years, which has made him one of the most important historians in the city. "There were so many things [I wanted to keep] and I didn’t even have the space to store everything," the 83-year-old recalled when to me over the phone. Eventually, Nirez managed to secure a warehouse at the Federal University of Ceará, which he used to conserve the images in this article.

“ABA Film took these photos because they thought it was wise to preserve the Carnival festivities in Ceará,” he explained, adding that the images show traces of international influences from photos that had been published at the time. “In Fortaleza, the Carnival was pretty different [from the rest of Brazil's celebrations], with specific things that were only seen in Ceará. The block parties and the crowds were followed by an orchestra, [whereas the rest of the country paraded with drums, string instruments, and vocals].”

You can see more photos of the Carnival celebrations in Fortaleza below:

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