Portraits of Brazilian Childhood

Five-year-old children with Down's syndrome play in a park in Curitiba, the capital of Paraná State. The parents of the little girl in the center of the photo fought a legal battle to keep their daughter in nursery school, where class sizes are smaller than in elementary schools.

The Brazilian National Education Guidelines and Framework Law state that nursery schools can only accept pupils up to the age of 5, unless the child turns 6 after April 1 of that academic year.

Children at the Foundation for Child Welfare (Fundação Estadual para o Bem-Estar do Menor) play outdoors in São Paulo.

Until 1990, the organization also provided help for at-risk youngsters. It then started working exclusively with young people who were in trouble with the law. In 2006, it changed its name to Fundação Casa.

A boy runs along a cobbled street in the Bela Vista neighborhood, in central São Paulo. Also known as Bixiga, Bela Vista is known for its mix of Italian immigrants and Black descendants of escaped slaves.

With almost 1,000 buildings listed by the Municipal Council for Heritage Preservation (Conselho Municipal de Preservação do Patrimônio), the neighborhood is also home to the famous Church of Our Lady of Achiropita, named after Bela Vista's patron saint.

Girls during a lesson at a school in the city of Caraguatatuba in São Paulo State.

Since São Paulo's school legislation was too disjointed to cope with the increasing number of public schools, in 1933, the state government introduced the first São Paulo State Education Code in an attempt to reorganize the state's educational laws.

Siblings Trumack, 8, and Putdjawa, 6, from the endangered Indigenous Avá Canoeiro tribe, play on the banks of the Tocantins River in Minaçu, Goiás State. At that time, there were only 10 members of the tribe remaining: 6 in Goiás State and 4 in Tocantins State. The two groups had never managed to live together.

Only relations between the siblings or with their parents could prevent the extinction of the tribe, but incest is punishable by death in the Avá Canoeiro tradition.

In 2017, their father died of metastatic lymphoma at the age of 56. Potdjawa, his daughter, married into the Tapirapé tribe and had three children.

The Official Traffic School (Escola Oficial de Trânsito) and the Department for Education give guidance on road safety to elementary school pupils in São Paulo.

The project, launched two months earlier, came about because of the growing number of accidents recorded every year by São Paulo State's traffic division.

A couple of children dance at the party held at the Palmeiras sports hall to bring the Folha de São Paulo newspaper's 1st National Children's Art Fair to a close.

Around 3,000 children attended the party, taking part in dances and costume parades inspired by characters from the books of children's author Monteiro Lobato, such as the Viscount of Corncob (Visconde de Sabugosa), after whom the party was named. Over the years, the fair would bring together artistic works from different parts of Brazil.