The origins of the Brazilian Streetball culture can be traced back to North American Street Basket. It is one of the most fascinating cultural manifestations of recent times. Where black youngsters in North American suburbs started this movement, the culture today is a legend in its own right. In the beginning it was a kind of resistance and an emblem of their black inheritance. The movement spread to South America, particularly Brazil, where Streetball is closely related to the Hip Hop movement. The search for the African background restores in many ways, the self confidence in young suburban kids. It gives them a social role in which they feel integrated in a much broader community.

Our challenge was in capturing the undercurrents of this black culture, which is so critical to the Brazilian formation, and understand how this manifests itself and interacts with other social manifestations in the country. It’s not everyday that an anthropologist, a photographer and a graphic designer come together, to live among the icons of this movement, stay with them, share their passion in the streets as much in the playgrounds, go to their hang out places, meet their friends and parents to get a first hand insight into this movement. This epic study was released to critical acclaim in 2008.