ImageMagica

Recognition

Projects

Developed in schools, institutions and community centers, the program teaches the participants to photograph with digital or handmade pinhole. More than learning something specific about photography, like developing and enlarging the images, the students have a chance to look at their world in a different way - and the power to transform it. With themes like the environment, citizenship, violence and respect, we seek to stimulate the reflection of the participants about the reality that surrounds them, their school, their family, their neighborhood and country. At the end of the program, the participants share the knowledge they had learned with their community. Since 1995, the program has already been in more than 70 educational institutions throughout Brazil.

The program acts in hospitals, health centers, among others. In those places, everybody can turn into a photographer, from doctors, nurses, psychologists and cleaning staff to patients and their families. With a digital camera in their hands, they are invited to take photos that represent caring: how they take care of others and how others treat them. The hospital’s atmosphere and the relationships between all of them get better and, at the end, the participants receive their photos with captions made by them. In this way, the program helps promoting a more humane health care service. Since 2006, the program has been in over 50 hospitals throughout Brazil.

Released in 2006, the book is the result of photographer André François’ expedition throughout the five regions of Brazil. The photo-documentary portrays the humanization and care inside hospitals, health centers and among health teams. The photographer searched stories from all over Brazil, from big cities, such as São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, to small isolated villages in the Amazon. These people show that, no matter the resources, taking care of the patients is a fundamental part of their work. Some images from Caring were exhibited in an individual room at the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP in Portuguese initials), as part of the Pirelli/Masp Photography Collection in 2009. In 2011, an iPad version for Caring was released. Besides the pictures and text, the app has making of photos, videos and interviews with the author, revealing curiosities of the documented stories.

The book is the important record of the sagas of people in search for access to health in the country. In "The curve and the path" (2008), photographer Andre Francois reveals true inspired stories that humanize the statistics and show us the challenges of promoting health in a country as vast as Brazil. In 2008, the book won the 1st place in Published Photo Essay on Conrado Wessel Foundation Award 2008. Also, photographs of this documentary were chosen in 2009 to be part of the permanent Pirelli-Masp Photography Collection, the largest photo collection in Brazil.

While André François was developing the book The curve and the path (2008), he had the chance to get in touch with several chronic renal patients and their stories. Many of them lived in the countryside and needed to travel three times a week or move to a bigger city to have access to hemodialysis. By researching and getting deeper into the subject, the photographer got in contact with peritoneal dialysis, which although it could be done at home with more convenience, it is still not well known. Keeping that in mind, André decided to photograph stories of people who adhered to this treatment and could move on with their lives inside their homes while awaiting kidney transplant. Published in 2009, Choosing and Living aims to contribute to make this treatment better known and encourage organ donation. In the same year, the book was one of the finalists in the category Published Photo Essay on Conrado Wessel Foundation Award, one of the most important photography prizes in Brazil.

Home care in Brazil is still little known and publicized. However, it is cheaper for the government and brings better quality of life for the patients, who can enjoy the warmth of their family. Interested in knowing who are these patients and how they live, André François published the book Back home. With a large background from five years of covering health issues in Brazil, André decided to meet and document stories in many homes across the country, from big cities like São Paulo and Curitiba, which have a good medical infrastructure, as in isolated regions, such as Indigenous areas in the Amazon rainforest, with little access to health care. Published in 2010, Back home brings stories of patients, families and health teams who experience this reality everyday such as little Maria Carolina Leuzenski, that due to a muscular dystrophy, spent the first two years of her life in the hospital and after getting the agreement of the health insurance to cover the expenses of home care, could to go to her home and finally attend school. Besides André François’ pictures, the book includes a series of pictures made by the characters of the book, who were invited by ImageMagica’s educational team to show in photographs the meaning of being able to be cared for at home.

The photographic documentary approaches feminine questions like pregnancy among teenagers, family relations, domestic violence and facing illness such as cancer: major topics that surround the health and welfare of Brazilian women. Women who are examples for their country, community, family and themselves. The stories recorded move and inspire by showing us that, despite the difficulties faced, there are still reasons to move forward. The project resulted in an exhibition and a video documentary.

The book Brazilian Health Expeditions (2013) brings together the best of the material produced by photographer Andre Francois in eight trips by the side of the organization. The Brazilian Health Expeditions are a group of doctors, nurses, volunteers and logistical agencies that organize expeditions to indigenous communities and isolated river villages of the Amazon to carry out medical consults and simple surgeries, such as cataract and hernia. Andre follows the group since 2007, along with being with them during their first international trip made to Haiti, after the strong earthquake that the country faced in 2010. In the work, aside from the photographic essay, there is a logbook describing the daily life from the visited communities during the expeditions.

After several years photographing themes related to health in Brazil, André François wanted to expand his work to different countries. In 2008, Life Project began intending to show communities across the world, how they live and how that affects them and their health. The photographer researched initiatives related to health promotion and quality of life to show that it’s more humane and less expensive to take care of people before they get sick. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that for each dollar spent in health promotion 5 dollars are spared from being spent in treatment.

By portraying simple and effective initiatives related to health, agriculture, education, access to water and others, the photographer inspire people and governments into changing their policies. André has already documented the customs, promotion of health and quality of life of the Yanomami, an Indigenous community located in the north of Brazil; Cambodia, one of the poorest countries in southeast Asia; post-earthquake Haiti; Queens, neighborhood in New York that concentrates one of the most diverse cultures in the world; the Inuit, people of Nunavut, territory in the northernmost region of Canada; Japan, after the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the country in 2011. In the following year, in the African continent, the photographer traveled to seven countries: South Africa, Lesotho, Mozambique, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, documenting projects related to HIV, malaria, tuberculosis and access to water and food. In 2013, with the trip to China, Andre documented the contrasts between the so-called cancer villages and the agriculture of the interior of the nation. Besides that, the photographer was able to follow the work of doctors of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Life Project has the support from the World Health Organization, United Nations, Pan-American Health Organization, Médecins Sans Frontières and other organizations.