In the first in our series on Brazil’s young black photographers, we profile Rafa Kennedy whose work uplifts the gender identity travesti and local black queer bodies
According to ANTRA (National Association of Travestis and Transsexuals), Brazil saw an increase in cases of trans people murders in 2019, and in the first four month period of 2020. It was believed that during the Covid-19 pandemic, with the need for social isolation, the murder rates could decrease, as happened in other parts of the population, but since travestis and transgender women sex workers continue to work on the streets to ensure their subsistence, the murder of transgender people has increased. Broader social factors also have intensified and impacted the lives of transgender people in Brazil.
It’s common for videos showing travestis and transgender women being beaten and killed to go viral, however it isn’t common to see their victories and achievements. So to counter this, Rafa Kennedy has shot Terra Johari on the day of her master's degree graduation in Social Anthropology at USP (University of São Paulo) - the most important educational institution in South America - and Saint Mother Dil Vaskes Serafim, who occupies the highest hierarchical position in the Afro-Brazilian religion Camdomblé. In this way, and through many other powerful portraits, Kennedy turns a key of strength and power for others like her to believe in their potential.
Kennedy photographs subjectivities and multiplicities of black travestis and queer bodies from Brazil with a unique sensibility aiming at the rescue of everything that was taken from them. “It is more than time to see those who continue to maintain their privileged places to open up spaces for the Global South to bring up other life stories, no longer from the perspective of the coloniser or from the North, but from our unique looks and productions,” Kennedy asserts.
Being born in the middle of the Amazon meant Kennedy’s life was shaped by the fear of family disappointment, racism and psychological violence. In the search for her autonomy she saw photography as a route to a different life, so she migrated to the south-eastern region of Brazil looking for knowledge of the technique and landed in the city of Campinas located in the interior of the state of São Paulo. There, she studied at UNICAMP (State University of Campinas) and found the possibility of collective construction, joining together with the fashion designer Vicenta Perrotta and founding the upcycling TRANSmoras studio alongside travesti model, artist and thinker Manauara Clandestina.
Her pictures have since featured in the TRANSvisual exhibition at CCSP - Centro Cultural São Paulo (2020) and the Vozes Contra o Racismo" (Voices Against Racism) urban occupation action curated by Hélio Menezes (2020). Her photojournalism work was part of the documentary Quebrando o Tabu - Episódio Racismo e Resistência by GNT and 130 Years of Abolition: Limits and Senses of Freedom Today" at Centro de Pesquisa e Formação SESC São Paulo (2018). Currently, she has a digital exhibition called "So They Won't Forget!" at UNICAMP.
In an incisive way, Kennedy’s images now expose the porosity in definition of who can postulate their own local imagination as a new and universal imagination. "All the bodies that I photograph bring up urgent issues of survival, exposing not only a country, but a world inflamed by inequalities, which at this moment in particular Brazil we are doomed in a mismanagement based on necropolitics,” she concludes. “My photography is the mirror of my connections in life, my feelings, what I comprehend about decoloniality. The life in abundance of travesti as a substantially Brazilian gender identity has been the main story I have been telling."
Words Ode
Visit Rafa Kennedy
From Brazil, With Love And Optic Games is a Nataal series spearheaded by Ode, a São Paulo-based stylist, writer and independent curator. Brazil, which has the largest black population outside the African continent, is home to a new generation of young black photographers who are creating fresh perspectives on fashion and art. This series of interviews sees Ode explore how their work both expands ideas around representation and participation and challenges Western perspectives that ignore the Global South as part of black life and diasporic conversations.
Read our other stories in this series here.
Published on 29/10/2020