SÃO PAULO

Foto by Vlad Barreto

There are only two ways to get to São Paulo: by land or by air. Either way, the traveller's choice doesn't matter; his lasting impression of the city will always be the same.

For those who travel by land, via a country road, they pass numerous impressive and beautiful landscapes, then, growing from the horizon, right after a curve behind a hill, they see a dull, uneven grey mass; a mosaic of concrete, projecting vertically, transforming into an unattractive jungle of shoebox-like trees.

Those who travel by air are taken aback by their first sight of the city and its haphazard forms. From the air, as far as the eye can see, the geography of São Paulo resembles a reservoir trying to swallow up the buildings. The greyish lake spreads between the valleys, veins and roads, until it becomes one with the uneven horizon. In the disorder and disorientation previously unidentifiable figures are now clearly visible. Even with its colours, everything seems dark, pallid, and anaemic. And so, as the traveller descends steadily, the once deformed horizon hides itself behind the immobility of vertical buildings, which seem to creep upward from the ground.

From high above or from the ground, the visitor arrives at a rock-solid city once seen as an immense colourless ocean. Closer, the unreachable space of its high vertical horizon defined by skyscrapers, the numbness on one's sight is finally realised.

Introduction to the book São Paulo, 17/7/2007,
by Vladimir Barreto, 2007
Translated by Vladimir Barreto