Severino Silva was born on August 20, 1958 in Pirpirituba, interior of Paraíba, married to a carioca who is the mother of his three children. At the age of 10 he comes to Rio de Janeiro with his mother, grandmother and a sister. He was a child who loved to draw, but his passion for photography begins when he received an old Kodak126 as a gift, but was very distressed, the laboratory only delivered the photographs after three days, for him almost an eternity. At sixteen he gets a job at the newspaper O Globo as a continuum and then goes to Photomechanics, but his dream was to be a photographer. He then goes on to take several photography courses, including the High School of Arts and Crafts and the Senac courses. Starts working as a freelance photographer for O Globo neighborhood newspapers. Then he went to O Fluminense, People of Rio, The News and The Day, where he still lives today. For those who are close to us, above all, he is a humanist who, in his office, is not limited to extolling the beauties of our city, but immerses himself in the day by day of the dispossessed with their difficulties, their challenges, their ills and through their camera makes a unfiltered record or photoshop of the daily violence that torments us all.
In September 1992, in the newspaper O Povo do Rio, when he discovered a complaint that in Parque Fluminense, in Duque de Caxias, they had “dispatched” a human head on a soccer field, Severino may have taken the most controversial picture of his career. and which provoked heated debates about the role of the press in trivializing urban violence, Severino followed the experts’ work and proved it to be true. On Team Rodo’s soccer field, a severed man’s head was placed between two candles and children played soccer, having fun as if nothing had happened. This photograph gained international prominence, traveled the world, was republished by the French magazine Photo and was featured in a debate at the Union of Journalists during the “Visual Quartas Project” in which Severino and Léo Corrêa designed their work focusing on Urban Violence.
Holder of several national and international awards such as the “Tim Lopes Award” 2014 and the “Nikon Award” 1992 has exhibited his work in Brazil, Denmark and Germany. Severino Silva was named by The Guardian newspaper as one of the best Brazilian photojournalists today.
The Best of Photography 