Olympic Favelas

In many of Rio de Janeiro’s shanty towns, or favelas, the city’s housing authority, the Secretaria Municipal de Habitação (SMH), is enforcing policies to evict families and demolish their homes--often with little or no notice, and sometimes with use of force--in advance of construction for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games. Responding to news reports of these evictions, in late 2012 New York–based Marc Ohrem-Leclef (born 1971) set out to portray the people directly and indirectly affected by these evictions, and the residents organizing their neighbors in resistance to SMH’s abuse of power. Photographs of the subjects in their respective environments are complemented by portraits in which they hold an emergency flare, representing their ongoing struggle to avoid the destruction of their homes while using the core symbol of the Olympic Games, also a symbol of liberty and independence.