This photo, which the then 17-year-old Chemnitz-born photographer Hans Günter Flieg took in Brazilian exile in 1940, offers a view of central São Paulo and its Avenida Nove de Julho. It came just a year after the Jewish Flieg family had emigrated from Germany to Brazil.

After further training and practical experience in advertising photography, Flieg increasingly devoted himself to documentary photography. In this image we can already recognise what Flieg’s body of work indicates as a whole: his optimistic attitude towards the industrialisation of Brazil. The long, wide Avenida, compellingly framed by Flieg, gives the viewer an idea of the opportunities for growth, the potential that the million-plus metropolis São Paulo offered as far back as the 1940s. The city experienced a major construction boom in the 1950s and drew ever greater numbers of immigrants from Europe. With his images, distinguished as they are by their technical quality and meticulous composition, Flieg provides a portrait of developments in this era.