Fernanda Frazão is a photographer and filmmaker based in São Paulo, Brazil. She is working through the use of different media, producing unique images and narratives telling stories.
She has been the director of Chega de Fiu Fiu, which is a feature documentary about harassment against women in public spaces in Brazil, produced during 2018. The film has been exhibited all over Brazil and in more than 10 countries around the world. Fernanda is also the author of Amazon Side B, produced in 2017. This last one is a photo essay awarded by LensCulture Street Photography and exhibited at Museum of Image and Sound (MIS), Voies Off Recontres d’Arles, Valongo Festival, Luz del Norte.
About ‘Amazonia lado B’ – words by Fernanda Frazão:
Working with travel photography in the last years, I could experiment with tourism in its multiples dimensions. One of its aspects that really fascinates me is its democratization.
In the last decade, Brazilian middle class increased its expenses on tourism by 277%. Displacement, besides being more frequent, is more accessible and while in the past traveling was a privilege reserved for an economic elite, today the whole picture has changed and around 50 million people from this social strata, according to one recent survey, have the desire to travel.
Tourism has a dual identity that leads us way beyond the iconic spots: When we watch from the outside, it is easy to highlight the enormous impacts caused by tourists on the communities they visit. However, when we are travelers, we are overwhelmed by a will of something similar to childish happiness.
Traveling for tourism is like a celebration and tourists vibrate in a frequency of pleasure and joy. The essay “Amazon B-Side” is a portrait of this elusive feeling of a middle-class journey in an all-inclusive cruise ship traveling along the Black River on the Brazilian rainforest.
