Ouro bruto

The book begins with the black and white images of the 1980's, scenes that impressed Brazil at the time. Created in 1979, when the first gold nugget was discovered, the Serra Pelada mining site attracted more than 25,000 prospectors and fascinated photographers from all over the world: the amount of people, land and excavations gave the images monumental dimensions. "What woke the photographers in 1980 was this thing of many people: it was a hill, which ended up turning into a hole and a lake. As I went twice, I thought it would be nice to close this trilogy", explains photojournalist André Dusek (Rio de Janeiro 1956). Gradually, the black and white images of the 1980's gives way to the colorful photographs made in 1996 and in August 2019, in which the photographer reveals a quiet city, which seems still in time and inhabited by characters who lived the saga of the largest open air mine in the world. The work has 81 photos, with images taken in three time periods (1980, 1996 and 2019). The first contact was in the 1980s, when he spent two days on site for the newspaper "Correio Braziliense". At the time, more than 25,000 men were seeking fortune at the site. Dusek, who now lives in Florianópolis, photographed for the now defunct magazine "Manchete" and has in his curriculum the coverage of the National Constituent Assembly of 1988.