Sheet by Sheet: I retrieved the 8/1 photos after a month – 02/12/2023 – Power

Exactly one month after the Sunday of the anti-democratic attacks in Brasília, I saw for the first time part of the photos that I had taken on that January 8th for the Sheet. The images that I thought were lost are historical records of great importance: they show the invasion of the Planalto Palace and the confrontation between the police and the coup leaders, in the midst of a thick cloud of tear gas.

The photos had been lost along with the photographic equipment that was stolen from me by Bolsonaristas who participated in the protest.

The feeling is that there was some kind of guideline to prevent the press from fulfilling its role and covering what was happening in the headquarters of the Three Powers, the STF (Federal Supreme Court), the National Congress and the Planalto Palace. Several journalists were attacked and prevented from working. Photographers had memory cards and batteries ripped out of their cameras, others lost all their equipment amidst aggressions and offenses.

I had been hurriedly called by my editor to try to photograph the invasion and depredation of public buildings. I was off that Sunday and was finishing a lunch celebrating my son’s birthday.

Upon arriving at the Praça dos Três Poderes, I saw a frightening battlefield. Coup plotters who occupied the ramp of the Planalto Palace used objects taken from inside the Executive headquarters as a shield against gas bombs and rubber bullets fired by the Military Police’s riot police.

In the Praça dos Três Poderes, people improvised pickaxes to pull Portuguese stones out of the ground and throw them at the police. Hundreds of stones were hurled as the police fought back with non-lethal weaponry.

I was trying to position myself safely in the midst of this chaos, to photograph everything I could. I approached the Planalto Palace to try to enter, but that was exactly where the confrontation with the police was strongest — it was impossible to get close at that moment.

I was photographing this confrontation between the coup leaders and the riot police when a Bolsonarist started pointing at me and calling other vandals, shouting that I was a journalist and that I was there to harm them. I tried to make conversation, to argue that I was just recording the facts, but there was no conversation possible.

Soon I was surrounded and verbal and physical attacks began. Between pushing, slapping and kicking, they advanced to grab my cameras. I tried to resist, but there were too many; I was alone and totally surrounded. One of them broke the wide-angle lens that was on one of my cameras and right after that a woman managed to pull the other camera that had a telephoto lens out of my hands and ran away.

Just 15 minutes after I had arrived, my coverage was closed and the photos were lost, in addition to material damage to the company’s equipment. Sheet.

After a month of all this, in the late morning of February 8th, I was advised by a fellow photographer that there was an advertisement on the internet for a camera similar to the one that was stolen from me for a price much lower than the market value. , which often happens with stolen equipment. When I saw the photos in the ad, I was sure it was my camera, as there was a mark of use —a very characteristic scratch— that clearly appeared in the published images.

Throughout the day, two friends chatted with the seller via messages on the sales platform, expressing interest in buying the equipment. They negotiated how and where delivery and payment could be. Meanwhile, I went to the Civil Police to see what could be done. When I managed to speak with agents from Decor (Department for Combating Corruption and Organized Crime), the body in charge of investigating the robberies and attacks on journalists on January 8, the delegate promptly set up an ambush operation to catch the seller in the act at the time of sale.

Exactly one month after the anti-democratic attacks, at about the same time that I was assaulted and robbed, the police arrested the guy who had my camera. Bigger surprise, the police also recovered the intact memory card with all the photos taken that day. I was overcome with incredible happiness. Much more than the loss of equipment and the aggression suffered, having lost the historic photos taken that day was what saddened me the most.