CARLOS CAZALIS: Megacities

Carlos Cazalis has documented some of the world’s largest cities. Whether on rooftops high above São Paolo, or down in the muddied alleyways of Dhaka, Cazalis’s lens has focused on both the macro aspects of urban development — seemingly never-ending skylines of built-up environment — and the deeply intimate, such as his series on the living spaces of the urban poor in Osaka. While each city that he photographs is unique, Cazalis uses his global experience to comment on the precarious state of megacities. Cazalis was able to correspond with PhotoEd to talk about his initial attraction to megacities, his work method for documenting them, and his thoughts on their future.

Q. What was the original impetus for focusing on megacities?

A. The first idea for this project was “home,” including my own, since I have traveled extensively and lived in over 10 countries since I was four. From that moment on, the impetus has continued as if the project itself was a megacity expanding. My work in Osaka was inspired by living in Dubai but also by my recent work in São Paulo. At that time I was surrounded by all this wealth in the Middle East and I discovered that the Japanese not only are ashamed of their poverty but also purposely try to eliminate and segregate it instead of allowing the poor a dignified life.

My Dhaka work came out of curiosity for global climate change, as hundreds of thousands fled flooding and mudslides in the Bangladeshi countryside. It’s the fastest growing megacity, receiving 300 000 people a year, and it’s an environmental calamity. Tehran for me represents some sort of poetic injustice: living in a magnificent cultural city but where people must live two lives, a public and a private [life], because of religious and political ideals. Mexico is now all about infrastructure, sustainability in an ironic twist of fate. Mexico City, once Tenochtitlan, stood on water. Today massive urbanization has permeated the soil and dried the wells, and the city imports 25 percent of its water, while flood rains stream into the sewage system and threaten to flood it because [the city’s] underground infrastructure has been collapsing and has not grown fast enough. Next I’ll be doing work in Lagos and Guangzhou.

Q. What are the themes or subject matters that you want to evoke when documenting these megacities?

A. It’s too complex to have one thematic definition. Yet all these cities have one thing in common—this dramatic number of 20 000 000 inhabitants. They are all relatively close to that mark or already beyond it.

Cities are really amazing places. Millions of people gathered in these high concentrations are thriving and surviving. My hopes are that we can see clearly how far we are from our natural environment, rich or poor. In cities, concrete, noise, people, automobiles, buildings, and garbage constantly surround us. Everything is in constant motion. There is little peace of mind, yet here are some of humanity’s greatest and oldest populations.

Q. How did you arrange for your aerial shots?

A. Because this project started as independently financed, I was limited to how I could shoot from above. Often in Brazil I could exchange photos for flights. As the project grew, I’ve depended on finding rooftops, often sneaking into buildings, as I did in Osaka. Ideally what I was always looking for was to show population density in terms of habitat and pollution, and to give the public a sense that all cities, no matter how good the infrastructure is, have a particularly unnatural development for human living.