Rene Burri took this in 1960, the year Brasilia was born. I love this photo so much. It contrasts the down to earth, simple Candango with that of this incredibly modern future forward thinking architecture.
Brasilia was never a travel destination... not even sure if it is today. It was never a mecca of culture and entertainment. Most of the time I lived there people were longing to leave the city, to get out to real Brazil. It was never to draw people in. If you worked for the government you were forced in.
And yet.... all these years later, I keep finding myself drawn to it. Many of my school mates who spent years away are finding themselves returning. Some to take care of their aging parents, others who still have family here and a few never left and settled their lives here.
This pic is amazing. First, look at the vintage propeller plane - so cool and then the shot of one of the Eixos - the main residential wing of the city. I lived in a building exactly like one of those in the cluster below. SQS 113. Even the address was modern...
"Scarcely any other twentieth-century monument is more spectacular and more photogenic than Brasilia. It is certainly not the only modern city to have been built from scratch, but with the exception of Chandigarh, the capital of the Indian state of Punjab that Le Corbusier had designed just a few years earlier, not one of these other new cities fired the imagination as did Brasilia"
I too fell the draw of the city. The shapes and lines beckon. Critics say the design is too modular, too antiseptic, too much of a postcard. Yes, I can't lie, I agree... but yet is beckons. It pulls on my emotions. There are memories attached to these structures. Names and faces come to mind as I think about Brasilia, not just the edifices. Memories filled with my own photographs of this unique city. Surely I will see her soon.....
Ate em breve cidade linda..... As saudades sao fortes demais!
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