Once upon a time, social distinction was marked by magnificent balls in the salons of the royal palace or some grand country estate, or, more discreetly, by literary gatherings in one of the elegant tea rooms or coffee shops in the capital.
Even today, a wedding, a baptism, an opening, a religious festival, still remain good reasons for getting together. Celebrations are charged with a weight of symptoms and symbols.

Sao Paolo, an enormous - and enormously contrasted - metropolis, a city at once Manhattan and Calcutta, is also very typical for the variety and inequality of its population. In Brazil, Sao Paolo carries a tremendous economic weight. Fashion, form, the media - everything starts here.

Night time in Sao Paolo is a condensation of all these contradictions, these tensions. Initially, my interest lay in the luxurious nights of the oligarchy. The jewels, the clothes, the cars (Brazil has more Ferraris than any other country in the world) so costly and ostentatious - and on the street corner children are begging, or taking drugs. Later, I turned to the sadder nights of the middle class, and a politically correct marketing of sex.

My subject, documentary-style, has a sociological import. Through an investigation of the different tribes of the night, I have endeavoured to develop a visual form and an assessment of humanity at the turn of the century.