Spread on the narrow littoral between rain forest-clad mountains and infamous beaches, the city of Rio de Janeiro is A Cidade Maravilhosa — The Marvelous City. This collection of images, from blessing to bloodshed, hopes to give a glimpse of the city’s crooked smile.
This is by no means a complete representation of a city that is as often elegant as it is perilous.
An elderly man, left, walks out of one of Rio’s many historic churches and past a beggar silouetted in the doorway. At top, the aerial tramway to the summit of Pão de Açucar — or Sugarloaf, the promontory rock at the mouth of Guanabara Bay — glides into the night sky over Rio.
All images ©Kevin Moloney 1995-1996
Crowds form around the bodies of two thieves killed on the street by Rio de Janeiro state police after the men robbed a nearby pharmacy. One police officer was charged with murder for the illegal street-side executions which were captured by TV cameras at the scene.
A nun of Mother Teresa’s Sisters of Charity order and an assistant take two young AIDS victims for a swim in the Atlantic Ocean on Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana Beach. The order operates a small home for the sick and aged in Brazil’s second largest city.
Busy rush-hour crowds scramble across Avenida Presidente Vargas in downtown Rio. The banking district is a shining example of the contradictions of the city, where cellphone-wired professionals walk the same streets as a huge homeless population. At rear is the Candelária church where eight street children were killed by a death squad in 1993.
Below, commuters watch passing traffic while waiting for a bus on a busy avenue in downtown Rio.
Three boys toss rocks at left into the Atlantic Ocean below Pão de Açucar at the Red Beach in Rio. The former Brazilian capitol is set in one of the world’s most beautiful locations.
Students from several schools wave banners and listen to speakers during a demonstration over inadequate educational funding in Rio de Janeiro. Public school teachers in Brazil often make only the minimum wage of $100 per month. Most must take second and third jobs to survive in one of the Western Hemisphere’s most expensive cities.
A carioca family in the Flamengo neighborhood snack on barbecued shrimp and sip beer while watching television outside their house on a hot summer day.
A street vendor spites a summer rain to sell fresh fruit from a stand on a Rio side street.
A mother sits on a roof-top landing with her children in Rio’s Rocinha slum. Estimates of the population in the hill-side shantytown vary from three to five hundred thousand, making it one of South America’s largest slums. Rocinha spills down a hillside over the chic beach-front neighborhood of São Conrado, affording it one of the best views in the city.
Dancers at a Baile Funk demonstrate their moves at a street dance in Rio. A cross between rap and soul, Brazilian Funk — pronounced FOON-kee — is a combination of block party and gang rumble where rivals may meet to fight through choreographed kicks and punches.
Rio de Janeiro state police look over the bodies of two murder victims dumped in the hills above the city. Though officers doubted they would ever find the killers, they suspected the deaths to be drug-related executions.
Signs advertising hotdogs and sodas tempt passers-by in a crowded shopping district in the center of the city.
A baby smiles as she is carried through a paper-strewn street in the Rocinha slum on election day. Supporters for the candidates of a myriad of political parties shower the streets with pamphlets as voters go to the polls.
