HORSE AND HUMAN MEANDERINGS: (UN)EXPECTED INTERACTIONS IN URBAN LANDSCAPES

Abstract

This photoessay brings into focus the interaction of equines and humans in two municipalities of the Greater Curitiba.  It is the result of several decades of research, dating back to the 1990s, a longitudinal angle that allowed the researcher to perceive the drastic retraction of equine presence within the capital (driven by the municipal law that in 2015 banned the use of animal traction within its geographic limits), contrasting with equine presence in the ‘border zones’ of the capital, where urban peripheries and outlying municipalities meet. It is these other spaces that continue as repositories of a way of life that the expansion of the capital, in its hygienist eagerness, puts to rest. In the regions where city limits meet  bordering municipalities, amidst a smattering of differences that mixes remaining bits of countryside and already highly urbanized areas, humans and horses continue their coexistence, sometimes intense, other times merely taken for granted.  Using photography to document this interaction means intent observation of the fabric of this everyday interaction – the material, the corporeal, the  affective and the sensitive, part of a story about the occupation of spaces, ways of life, choices and power.