Produced simultaneously with the Fantasias series, this set dedicated to the pacistas and rainhas offers a counterpoint. As if to compensate for the remoteness that the subject of the fantasias, by their size, imposed on the photographer, he returns to the figures of the pacistas, the dancers surrounding the float, and the rainhas, queens competing for their consecration. This time, he frames it tightly, in an American shot, with a carpet of carmine red feathers as a background for the pacistas. Faces and bodies are offered without detour to the eye. The bare bodies of the dancers are adorned with the same sky-blue finery, the sex and the chest covered with a small two-piece embroidered swimsuit, the wrists girded with large matching cuffs and a collar continuing into a headdress blossoming in height in a bouquet of feathers of the same blue. The background seems to be constrained with difficulty to the exercise of the pose, and rustles, impatient to be able to enter in action. A few rainhas pose, looking mutinous, all in their role of competitor and seductress. This time, the photographer doesn’t ask them to give up smiling in front of the lens, as for the Winner Faces of the Steps series dedicated to Finnish skaters, the smile is one of the essential accessories of the outfit they wear. Each one wears a different costume, opting for more or less colors, volumes, feathers. Some kings, the “momo” punctuate the gallery of female silhouettes, paunchy, the air satisfied, the face wedged under a crown more royal than the king.
