Favelas and the Visual Afterlives of Slavery’s Cities

This article uses examines how Black urbanity was represented from the 19^th to the early 20^th centuries. It considers how Black urbanity was lived, imagined, and visualized in the nineteenth-century city, focusing on the tense interdependence between the slave city (the city structured by slavery) and the cidade negra (the city created by and for Black people). It then analyzes how municipal photographers represented 20^th century favelas and mocambos through the visual regimes of the slave city. But informal urbanism constituted its own visual practice, allowing Afro-descendants to indelibly inscribe the Black city onto the urban canvas.

Keywords
Favela; Photography; The Black City; Slavery; Racism