Framed story
Unicamp acquires the collection of photographer Aristides da Silva, the
V-8, to guarantee the conservation of relics from Campinas

“The nickname V-8 belonged to my brother, who went to Santos. They called me: 'he's V-8's brother, V-8's brother!'. When we don’t like it, the nickname sticks.”

“I bought a small camera, an Agfa 'coffin', the 6 by 9. I started photographing in the fields, I started slowly. I didn't know how to put a film on it, which was a glass plate. As I went along, I improved myself”

“It was a station wagon from São Paulo that I bought and took the sheets of glass to clean and frame. She bathed more than five thousand negatives. They sold like glass. I took a lot of things, I had been saving them. So, everyone said: 'Take it, the V-8 that is a trash collector is being collected'.
I picked up a lot of things in the trash.”

ANTONIO SCARPINETTI

The images of slave labor at the end of the 1.800th century, which tell the visual story of the installation of tracks for animal-drawn tram traffic, have been lost to time. The photographic emulsion of these snapshots, on the framed glass plates, could not withstand the relentless action of corrosive humidity. Of a set of three boxes, found in an old house in the Cambuí neighborhood, in Campinas, nothing could be used. The author had died without allowing anyone to get their hands on the originals of his work. “Everything stuck to the edges. You saw it, then you cried”, laments the collector. In another residence, however, he saved more than XNUMX negatives from the trash, from the times of Francisco Glicério: the people's way of life, the architecture, the light, the movement...

In the memories of Aristides Pedro da Silva, who became famous in the city as the V-8, these images are alive. Since the time he searched for treasures in the basements of aristocratic mansions in Campinas. Deposits where junk of little value was thrown away, forgotten in the recesses of memory, at a time when people often didn't even know about the relics lost among the junk and which he recovered for posterity. “Hey, there’s a lot of glass at home!” All it took was a tip from someone he knew for him to collect the objects that formed one of the most important collections in the history of Campinas' development. The archive covers the end of the 19th century and almost the entire half of the 20th century.

This iconographic heritage, transformed into a reference work for historians and researchers, is now under the custody of Unicamp. The set, totaling more than five thousand negatives and enlargements, until then under the custody of the Museum of Image and Sound (MIS), was incorporated into the image archive of the Unicamp Memory Center (CMU). The photographer had authorized, in 2001, the transfer of the collection from his residence to the MIS, following a request from Mayor Antonio da Costa Santos, murdered in September.

At the beginning of December, the rector of Unicamp Hermano Tavares signed an ordinance determining the release of R$42,2 for the acquisition of photographs collected and produced by V-8, which the CMU had been negotiating for a few years. The photos will now be diagnosed, restored and organized by the Center's technical team, together with MIS technicians, who will be trained to also participate in the recovery and cataloging work. Digital copies of the images will be available for academic research and access will be free for students in primary and secondary schools.

Ford cars, amidst the movement on Rua Barão de Jaguara in Campinas, at the end of the 30s. This image displayed in a window of the V-8 studio, on Rua Treze de Maio, aroused the interest of passers-by. And this pleasure in displaying his photos made Aristides Silva a reference as a collector of precious treasures. The images went around the world and are still part of exhibitions on the walls of restaurants, galleries, in the media and in regional history publications.
“If the garbage man understood a little about art, he would become rich. Even sterling went to waste, but he didn't know about it. It was a common thing. The group said: 'Take it to the V-8, which is a garbage man”, recalls Aristides. Great moments of the 20th century, flashes of memory, are stored in the heart of the museologist.

Aristides Silva, 80 years old last October, is a man with a simple life and dedicated to his love for his city. Photographer and sensitive researcher, recognized as a professional of great importance for Campinas, now has his legacy preserved, not only for his contemporaries, but for future generations who will still be fed by this rich source of light, lyricism and reality.

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Paths of art

V-8 discovered the paths of art in his childhood of humble origins, when contemplating the green fields of coffee farms in the District of Sousas, or in the manors of farms in Valinhos (SP). His photographer friend Mário de Oliveira guided him at the beginning of his career.

When he started recording football games in 1947, he used an Agfa coffin machine. The rudiments of European culture helped him in the construction of his photographic perspective, when he carried canvases and boxes of brushes and paints for French tourists, guests at the Hotel Fonte Sônia in Valinhos. Self-taught also in painting.

The sensitive look, the light in the exact measure. Aristides Silva's obsession with ideal lighting led him to remain for hours in front of the Municipal Theater to photograph the demolition of the monument.

The passion for art was clear even in wedding photos. Historical events, the deconstruction of old buildings, Guarani fanaticism, records of the city that no longer exist. In the collection of multiple authors, made up mainly of donations, the architectural changes of Campinas and its daily life are forever frozen. The funeral procession of maestro Carlos Gomes, the demolition of the Municipal Theater and the Rosário Church, the snow covering Praça Bento Quirino in 1927, the asepsis of the Municipal Market at the turn of the 19th century. The farewell to the trams and the removal of urban tracks , Fazenda Barreira in 1923, Banda do Boi founded in 1905, Festa dos Padeiros in 1909, Rua Barão de Jaguara in 1930...

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