Shifting Horizons – Urban Space and Social Difference in Contemporary Brazilian Documentary and Photography: Bulletin of Latin American Research Book Series

With large-scale urban expansion and population density a challenge for cities within Brazil and globally, how we deal with socio-economic and cultural differences is of increasing concern for those aspiring towards durable cohabitations of urban space in the twenty-first century. Shifting Horizons is an interdisciplinary investigation of the treatment of social difference in documentary and its potential to impact change. The documentary realm has historically provided a forum for the representation and interrogation of socio-economic inequalities. But nowadays the desire for change embedded in the documentary tradition of conscientização collides continually with a widespread disbelief in the power of such imagery to effect social or political change.

Shifting Horizons examines this collision through the lens of recent Brazilian works portraying traditionally "marginalised" urban spaces. The book bridges the domains of film and still photography to introduce a range of innovative and highly contemporary artists, filmmakers, and cultural commentators, exploring their engagement with concepts of segregation, integration and relationality. Ultimately asking: how can we think about transformation in social documentary practice and production today?