For years I had been trying to get to Brazil. Her music, people, sensual language and geography seemed unreachable. All my plans to land in Rio or Sao Paulo were thwarted by circumstance. In 2013 I finally made the first of two month long trips. These photographs, from that first trip, stemmed from wanderings in the urban corridors and nether worlds of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, the country's two megacities.

The extremes of these cities were overwhelming. Horrible income disparity, impossible geographic beauty, endless seas of cement, racial tension, a culture of violence passed from generation to generation. Complex doesn't scratch the surface. The country is frustration, joy, desperation, fear, love, sweat and exasperation all boiling together. I miss it dearly.