Picture a Favela

FA∙VE∙LA (noun; from the Portuguese) “A Brazilian shantytown… a slum… any untidy place…” 


André Diniz’s award-winning biography of his friend, the acclaimed photographer Maurício Hora, is a uniquely vivid and life-enhancing account of a struggle against the odds – and a graphic masterpiece in its own right. Born in the original “Favela”, on the hill overlooking Rio de Janeiro, his childhood blighted by poverty, oppression, and family tragedy, Maurício’s life was rescued by the inspiration he found in a camera’s viewfinder: to see, to look, to frame the vibrant warmth of the human world around him. So shut your own eyes, open them again, and… Picture a Favela.


“Where it goes above and beyond a stylishly drawn life history, is when Diniz takes us beyond the Hora family, to the extended family dynamic of the streets of the favela” – Forbidden Planet International