Três Ranchos , 2014-2019

The small town of Três Ranchos, located in the extreme southwest of Goiás state, has an origin somewhat uncertain, whose first registration dated from 1874 refers to a farm of the same name. Nothing is known about it before, but shortly thereafter, at the end of the 19th century, some documents prove that my great-grandfather Cândido Vaz, borrowed a sum of money “in the Trez Ranchos”. Once in Três Ranchos, when it was not yet a town or even a district - and not even “Três Ranchos” - Mr. Geraldo Elói, another of its first residents, said that his grandfather had asked a servant to ride to the nearest town in search of information about the day, month and year that he and his countrymen lived.

Since I was a child, I listened to my father’s stories of Três Ranchos, while he complained about how he missed there. I naturally configured those stories into images, with the support of my own experiences and memories of the place and the few photographs from our family archive. At some point I started to write, in the same free way that my imagination invented this Três Ranchos, using mainly my father's stories as a reference, but also other books, places, narratives and the visits I made after it was already impossible for me to invent new stories and images without getting back there.

It took me almost seven years of work, from the first word written, to the many visits and the time to arrange and transform all the material created and collected in what I call a Novel - Journal. In it, I resort to the seasons and their tenuous limits, based on memories of a place that is born without time. The typewritten words and the photographs work together to sew this tangle of stories and images, reminiscing about depleted places, dead or aged people and stories that are slowly forgotten. Thinking Três Ranchos from its narratives and images and not from an “official” history makes it possible to suspend this place, in which the stories of Zé and Eci, uncle Evandro and dona Cututa, grandmother Eunice and do João do Rosário could be characters with other names, from other tales and places. In the Três Ranchos Novel - Journal, the archives collected over the years are ordered and overlaid based on a poetic dimension, without a concern to present the history of the place, but to arouse affection and nostalgia. From the moment I allow myself to recreate and reinvent the stories and characters, I also allow myself to rethink the aesthetics and formatting of a journal, which traditionally brings day, month and year, from which Mr. Elói's servant is still riding in search of.