CARNIVAL FRAGMENTS: LOST IMAGES OF RIO’S GREATEST CELEBRATION

words by GIULIA VAN OMMEREN
photographs collected by RAFAEL COSME

Next week, Rio de Janeiro will once again pulse to the rhythm of Carnival. This five-day spectacle of music, movement, and revelry is the city’s most anticipated event of the year, drawing millions of locals and visitors alike. Streets transform into endless stages, businesses pause, and Rio becomes a living, breathing celebration.

Among those capturing this energy is Rafael Cosme, a Rio-based artist whose work merges photography with a distinct poetic narrative. His fascination with antique fairs led him to a forgotten archive—discarded negatives and Kodachrome slides from generations of Brazilian amateur photographers. Through these lost images, he pieces together an intimate visual history of the city, where the beauty of everyday life meets the surrealism of memory.

Carnival in Rio is more than a party; it’s a transformation. The city becomes an open stage, where traditions mix with spontaneity. From samba parades to street blocos, the boundaries between reality and fantasy blur. Masked groups roam freely, identities shift, and for five days, Rio embraces a world where anything feels possible.

Despite the saying, “What happens at Carnival stays at Carnival,” its moments have always been documented—often not by professionals, but by the people within the chaos, capturing it through their own lenses. Cosme’s latest series brings these hidden perspectives to light. Anonymous faces in the streets, costumes frozen in time, fleeting romances immortalised on film. A raw, unfiltered view of a city in celebration.

One exception to the anonymity is Ricardo Martino, an engineer who, in the 1970s, carried his camera through the city daily. His archive—an expansive record of Rio’s streets—remained tucked away for decades until Cosme uncovered it.

These rediscovered images present a Rio where the ordinary becomes cinematic, where fiction and reality constantly intersect. “For me, there’s nothing more surreal than real life,” Cosme reflects. And in Rio, especially during Carnival, that sentiment has never felt truer.