Sand follows Gesiel and his friends on the beaches of Ipanema, where I photographed them over several years. I never saw them as “street kids”. On the sand they carried themselves like film stars: posing, holding the gaze, turning the beach into a set. Then the performance opens. Graciele holds a bird against her chest, showing me what the poses protect. A boy sits with a blue feather left over from carnival, the city’s promise washed up on the sand, his eyes red from crying. Made long before my research had a name, the series is where the question running through my later work first appears: where does the performance end and real life begin?