E2 EZ EE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, OCTOBER 20 , 2019
ExhibitionS
BY SEBASTIAN SMEE
IN LOS ANGELESF
ive months after the in-
auguration of President
John F. K ennedy, Gordon
Parks, the famous pho-
tographer for Life maga-
zine, found himself on a plane to
Rio de Janeiro. As he cruised
along at 30,000 feet, an immense
thought pressed in: I am about to
save a boy’s life.
His name was Flávio da Silva,
and he lived in a favela called
Catacumba on the steep hillsides
of Rio. Days earlier, the boy had
written: “This is a dream, and I
shall end by awakening.”
But it wasn’t. It w asn’t a dream.
It w as his life.
His life.
Though neither he nor Parks
could have foreseen it, Flávio was
about to become a pawn in a battle
between two media titans: one in
the United States, the other in
Brazil. Both publications were try-
ing to influence public opinion at
a time when the ideological and
geopolitical stakes felt frighten-
ingly high.Height of the Cold Wa r
Parks originally journeyed to
Brazil for a Life magazine assign-
ment on March 20, 1961, just as
Kennedy was proposing a foreign
aid program aimed at improving
cooperation between Latin Amer-
ica and the United States. Life’s
circulation at t he time was a round
7 million copies, the highest in the
land, and its Republican-leaning
editors weren’t shy about using
that influence.
It was the height of the Cold
War. Fidel Castro’s grip on Cuba
had tightened after t he Bay of Pigs
fiasco. Latin America looked vul-
nerable to communist takeover.
Life decided to launch a five-part
series titled “Crisis i n Latin Amer-
ica.” P arks, t he first African Ameri-
can to work as a staff photogra-
pher at the magazine, was as-
signed to the second part.
Brazil, like United States, had a
new president, Jânio Quadros.
Quadros inherited an economy in
crisis. He implemented an auster-
ity program, of which the United
States approved. But when the
United States offered $300 mil-
lion in foreign aid in return for
cooperating with U.S. opposition
to Castro’s C uba, Quadros rejected
it. The offer, he felt, was an insult
to Brazil’s autonomy. It was tanta-
mount to a bribe.
Life editors liked to script pho-
to assignments in advance. Parks
was told to go to the Rio favelas,
“find an impoverished father with
a family of eight to ten children.
Show how he earns a living....
Explore his political leanings. Is
he a Communist, or about to be-
come one?”
They wanted Parks to round
out the family shots with images
providing some social context:
ideally, a political r ally in the f avel-
as.
Parks had been uneasy about
the assignment from the begin-
ning. He h ad his own i deas. But a n
ally at Life urged him to accept,
saying: “Rio de Janeiro is a long,
long way from Rockefeller Plaza.
Who knows, you m ight just misin-
terpret your instructions?”
The first thing was to find a
suitable family. Parks went to the
favelas on a steaming hot day in
March 1961. He was accompanied
by José Gallo, who managed the
local bureau of Time Inc., Life’s
owner. As they climbed up a “tan-
gled maze of shacks,” Parks saw
Flávio, who was carrying a 40-
pound tin o f water o n his head and
who — he would soon discover —suffered from severe asthma.
“He was horribly thin,” Parks
wrote, “naked but for his ragged
pants. His legs looked like sticks
covered with skin and screwed
into two dirty feet. He stopped for
breath, coughing, his chest heav-
ing as the water slopped over his
shoulder and distended belly.”
Parks had his subject. He met
Flávio’s seven siblings in their
home, high up the Catacumba
hillside, and, that evening, h is par-
ents. Flávio’s mother, Nair,
worked as a washerwoman. She
was 35, and pregnant with their
ninth child. His father, J osé Manu-
el, was 42. He had a kiosk selling
kerosene and detergent.
Parks had traveled widely —
including an earlier trip to Rio —
but never had he seen such desti-
tution. He and Gallo explained
themselves and asked for permis-
sion to carry out their a ssignment.
“You can photograph us,” J osé re-
plied, eventually, “but you must
show us in a good light.”
“Just doing my j ob,” w e journal-
ists tell ourselves. The lives we
affect, and sometimes rearrange,
are rarely changed intentionally.
We maintain this stance even
when it feels suspiciously conven-
ient, discharging us from the obli-
gation to anticipate consequenc-
es.
Then again, some consequenc-
es are hard to anticipate.
Parks finished his assignment,
largely ignoring the instruction to
focus on the father and his politi-
cal leanings. Instead, he focused
on Flávio and on Flávio’s brothers
and sisters. He kept a diary of his
days in the favela. He was there
when the children woke up. He
photographed them in the rudi-mentary kitchen. He even took
them by car to Copacabana. The
famous beach was just 15 minutes
away, but they had never seen it,
and Parks recorded t heir euphoric
responses.
Each night he left t he favela and
returned, uneasy, to his room in
Copacabana’s upscale Hotel Ex-
celsior. Parks had grown up the
youngest of 15 children and the
victim of racist bullying. Now a
parent himself, he couldn’t helpbut empathize with Flávio. He
wrote of being “filled with confu-
sion and guilt during my f inal days
in Catacumba. Flávio, like thou-
sands of o ther children, would die.... I could not help compare the
good fortune of my own children
with the f ate of these o thers.”
Three weeks after he arrived,
Parks flew back to New York. “I
said goodbye to Flávio and the
family today,” he wrote. “‘Gordu-
un, when do you come back?’
[Flávio] asked. ‘Oh s omeday soon,’
I lied.”
But it wasn’t a lie.Photos with impact
Parks’s photos appeared in the
June 16, 1961, issue of Life under
the heading, “Freedom’s Fearful
Foe: Poverty.” You can see them in
the first room of “Gordon Parks:
The Flávio Story,” a riveting show
at the Getty Museum in Los Ange-
SEE FLAVIO ON E3A sick boy, a sympathetic journalist and a Cold War drama
Gordon Parks’s look at
poverty in ’60s Rio met
with Brazilian backlashPHOTOS BY GORDON PARKS/THE J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUMThe da Silva family’s
day begins, above, in
Rio de Janeiro. On
assignment in 1961,
photojournalist
Gordon Parks
documented the
family, focusing on
the boy Flávio, who
was later treated for
asthma in the United
States and is shown,
below, as an adult.Photo of Erika Rose and Craig Wallace by Scott Suchman.Season Sponsor: Chevron | Underwriters: The Home Depot; Oshkosh Corporationhttp://www.fords.org | Tickets: (888) 616-0270
directed by Timothy DouglasSee a Classic Play at Historic Ford’s
Final Week! Must Close Oct. 27TICKETS: (202) 785-9727 • WashingtonPerformingArts.orgTAIPEI SYMPHONY
ORCHESTRA
Jahja Ling, conductor
Paul Huang, violin
Felix Fan, cello
FRI, NOV 15, 8pm
STRATHMORE
Rare U.S. appearance!
Featuring violin virtuoso and
Avery Fisher Career Grantee
Paul Huang. Featuring
works by Brahms, Bernstein,
Gordon Shi-Wen Chen.
Special thanks: Susan S. AngellFanHuang2019/20 SEASONIn with the goodSign up at
washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-lifeS0120-2x3Get t he “Inspired Life”
e-newsletter for news
of good deeds, humor,
advice and inspiration.
Delivered Saturdays.