Brazilian Photographs of Carnaval by Genevieve Naylor:
In the early 1940s, as the conflict between the Axis and the Allies spread worldwide, the U.S. State Department turned its attention to Axis influences in Latin America. As head of the Office of Inter-American Affairs, Nelson Rockefeller was charged with cultivating the region’s support for the Allies while portraying Brazil and its neighbors as dependable wartime partners. Genevieve Naylor, a photojournalist previously employed by the Associated Press and the WPA, was sent to Brazil in 1940 by Rockefeller’s agency to provide photographs that would support its need for propaganda. Often balking at her mundane assignments, an independent-minded Naylor produced something far different and far more rich—a stunning collection of over a thousand images that document a rarely seen period in Brazilian history
We’ve included below just a sampling of Naylor’s striking photographs of the Carnaval celebration.
You can see more of her work in this virtual gallery curated by Mashable.
OR find a copy of The Brazilian Photographs of Genevieve Naylor, 1940-1942, edited by Robert Levine for Duke University Press in 1998.
