The Olympic Anthem

The Olympic Anthem is a series exploring the aftermath of the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It documents locations including islands to house the athletes, military bases, evicted favelas, active favelas, working and abandoned venues.

The full project documents over 30 venues and locations arranged in the form the negative sleeves to demonstrate the scale of construction necessary to host these games. The images depict each site as it can be found today. Each site is connected to a news article published during the games explaining their function and significance (I did not include these in the individual captions due to length). Transforming the city of Rio was a 7-year project which had devastating effects on vulnerable populations. This project traces the promise of a legacy. Its purpose is to trace the story of the games through images, research, and interviews. While there are both tragic and victorious aspects to the Olympics, at the core of the event is an echoing voice of the marginalized in need of amplification. This work is created with an intention of memorializing a landscape that became perhaps one of the most notable backdrops in all Olympic history; the first games held in the developing world. Each of the images contained in this study is one piece of a puzzle and a footprint on the map of Rio. One by one they tell a much bigger story. After passing through stadiums, slums, and islands built for the elite – we are left with a spotlight exposing social issues still needing to be addressed. Both Rio’s strengths and weaknesses were revealed during the games, and yet the legacy of the event is something much greater than construction investments. It is written on the hearts of the most vulnerable and incomplete without understanding a journey that began before and continues after the games.