GALLERY: Sao Paulo Street Visions

Life in the Vila Flavia favela of Sao Paulo, Brazil, can be seen as a bleak procession of barren vistas leading to a grim horizon of depression and death. But then there are the vivid and vibrant murals sprayed around town by the neighborhood’s OPNI, a Portuguese acronym that means Unidentified Graffiti Artists.

Since 1997, OPNI have been transforming slum walls into an open-air gallery celebrating the multi-chromatic carnival that is day-to-day existence as the flavela residents live it and dream it.