We have 15 photos by Pierre Verger in Corta Braço*, Liberdade, Salvador. For what we know Verger sent those to the Life Magazine in the United States. We don't yet know if these were published in the magazine.

In the study of Lühning and Pamfílio of 2012 titled «The winding ins and outs between oral history and photographic documentation: capoeira in Salvador on Pierre Verger's photos» they identified among others a group of photos which they described like this:

h) [later group 8] Other place in Liberdade, possibly also in Corta Braço, still without exact identification - 14 photos.

Also saying that: The photos of the groups 7 and 8, were mentioned by Verger in his notes as being from a place called Corta-Braço, part of the neighborhood of Liberdade, although visibly from two different places. The smalled group of photos shows people to the side of a mud hut, all in working clothes, however not identified.

Velhosmestres.com is posting 9 photos of the 14 down below. On the first of them to our eys M Waldemar manifests himself (red square) clearly. He is 31 years old, short, perhaps still without the moustache that he sports 5 years later on Brill's 1953 photos.

Now to the date. We read in Lühning and Pamfílio, 2012, that: [The notebooks with almost daily notes of Verger in French, relating to the possible perios of documentation] inform in telegraphic and sometimes obscure style, names of contacts, visited places, his work on the negatives, photos and revelations, as f.ex. in 20/11/1946 "... port portos capoeira ...", in 11/4/1948: “... Corta Braço - Waldemar capoeira...” or then in 23/10/1948: “... Waldemar - Port - Juvenal...”.

This takes us to the confirmation that the year of the photos is 1948, probably April.

But what place exactly in Corta Braço? Evidently it's some square - note the posters on the door and on the window. This we leave for one of our next researches, but what keeps the secret is perhaps the painting by Carybé - «Terreiro de Waldemar», 1964.

NB! In any case this is the earliest photo of M Waldemar that we know of.

Photo gallery

Corta Braço, today Pero Vaz

* The "invasion" of Corta Braço, in 1946[!], today the neighborhood of Pero Vaz, was the first social movement, in Salvador [..]. Carvalho and Pereira, 2014.