Declarations

Roberto Landulfo Furtado, journalist and photographer

When I met my friend Paranaguá, precisely in 1986, I had the impression that he was a person committed to the clarity of the real facts. With time we deepened our knowledge of each other and I saw him as a person who, besides being committed, as said earlier, was also concerned with the registration and documentation of history, as history without documentation is lost in people's memory. And now here is the friend Paranaguá with an extremely important recollection for the popular art, for street art, registering since 1985 his protests through graffiti and places that the state of Bahia recognizes and knows how to represent. Now, he brings for our pleasure, through the most beautiful and simple images captured with the sensitiveness and poetry that are so characteristic of him, part of this recent history, however already forgotten by the great majority of passers-by, who do not remember their true meaning.

Augusto Queiroz - Journalist and Lecturer of Communication

Initially seen as outcast art, and then taken to the category of masterpiece of art, thanks to the work of lightened people such as the new-Yorker Jean-Michel Basquiat, urban graffiti has been experimenting significant changes since its birth, at the second half of XX century. However, it has always preserved its contesting and experimentalist character, in the search of a new language on the excited urbanity, where the great human "ants' nest" develops its daily activities.

A phenomenon of planetary embrace, this form of art and expression has been studied by specialists of various areas of knowledge. On the local regional scene, the Public Relations Manager and Photographer José Francisco Paranaguá Guimarães, or just JFParanaguá, researcher of graffiti in its various and rich manifestations for decades registers this type of art in the streets of Salvador since 1985. Always attentive and astute, his lenses have captured the work of renowned artists such as Bel Borba, Faustino, Inha, Leonel Mattos, Gilson Maciel, U.P.I., Climax, César Carvalho, among others.

Most recently, he has been dedicated to documenting the wonderful work executed by the young artists of the Project Graffita, developed by the Municipal City Hall of Salvador, with an especially educative function, awakening the appreciation of a patriotic and activist art on the youngsters. It has granted the regional population and tourists with beautiful and amazing artistic panels, spread around different points of the capital of Bahia.