FGV CPDOC Photo Essay Wins the 2024 Pierre Verger Award
The School of Social Sciences at Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV CPDOC) won first place in the 2024 Pierre Verger Award (PPV) in the Photo Essay category for the work “Mirrors of Memory: Archival Images and the Recovery of the Past.” The images originated from the Indigenous Documentary Heritage project, a collaborative initiative between FGV CPDOC and the Apinajé People.
The award-winning photo exhibition was created by research assistant Laura Guimarães, co-coordinator of the Audiovisual and Documentary Center at CPDOC Gabriel Cardoso, and master’s student in Cultural Assets and Social Projects Andressa Iremex Apinajé, all of whom were present at the award ceremony. The ceremony took place during the opening of the 34th Brazilian Anthropology Meeting, which began on July 23 in Belo Horizonte (MG), at the Cine Theatro Brazil Vallourec.
The award, granted by the Brazilian Anthropology Association (ABA), aims to recognize films, photo essays, and drawings that engage in dialogue and experimentation with images, sounds, gestures, and movements through anthropological and ethnographic research processes and outcomes.
According to FGV CPDOC Director Celso Castro, this achievement represents a remarkable public recognition of the positive impact FGV has sought to achieve through its partnership with the Apinajé People:
“This important award reinforces the commitment we’ve established with the Apinajé People to collaboratively transform the archival collection we received into something living, dynamic, and full of meaning—for both them and us,” said Castro.
Mirrors of Memory
The winning photo essay celebrates memory and ancestry, which emerge through encounters with images. In the 1960s and 1970s, anthropologist Roberto DaMatta conducted fieldwork with the Apinajé People, and in 2022, he donated his personal archive to FGV CPDOC.
More than 40 years later, the award-winning essay documented the Apinajé People’s encounter with their own images, reflecting on how the archive is transformed through the different subjectivities that engage with it—and how it seems to unfold through them.
Award Ceremony
The 2024 Pierre Verger Award featured 27 film entries, 20 photo essays, and 8 drawings in competition. In addition to exhibitions and workshops, the event included conferences leading up to the award ceremony, featuring prominent figures in the field of anthropology such as Ailton Krenak, Olinda Tupinambá, Faye Ginsburg (Anthropologist/NYU), Pegi Vail (Anthropologist/NYU), and Isabel Noronha (Filmmaker/Mozambique).
To view the award-winning photo essay, click here.
To see the winners in other categories and the nominated works, visit the PPV website.
Visit the FGV CPDOC website.