Last week we covered the Foto8 awards at the Host Gallery. We were so impressed with Slovakian-born Andrej Balco's photographic entries that we decided to contact him for an interview. Andrej has always thrived on capturing the awkward, the unseen. Photographing patients at a mental health care home in Estonia for his first project in 2001, he moved onto capturing Ukrainian migrants working illegally in Slovakia in 2006. His most recent initiative has taken him further afield to the upper echelons of Rio de Janeiro society, where he looks at the unreported relationships between the richest people in the city and their antithetical equivalents – the domestic servants of their homes.

The practise of having domestic servants is widespread in Brazil. The majority of the servants arrive in the big southern cities like Rio from the impoverished north, with little to no prospects and often on the wrong side of the country’s 88.6 percent adult literacy levels*. Correspondingly, they are paid very little – and it is here that Balco’s project touches upon the delicate topic of modern slave labour.

Initially, the object of his project was to be a representation of the various forms of ill–treatment of the servants. However, Andrej came out of the experience with a rather different outlook: “The atmosphere amongst them was surprisingly very nice. Honestly, I expected a different kind of relationship between the owners and the servants. All of the maids apart from one seemed satisfied and happy with their work. The majority of them came from a difficult family background, resulting in low education and on many occasions, illiteracy. [But] I would not call it a friendship. Even if the relationships were very nice, full of understanding and respect for each other, it was obvious that there is no intention to step over the social gap. Brazilians are used to respect given to social status even more than Europeans. Vertical movement in Brazilian social stratification is negligible.”

In spite of this class impasse, Brazil, like many countries on the cusp of radical development, is nothing if not a foundry for fairytales. Balco told us the story of a young cleaner called Alexandra: “Her boss is a successful lawyer and keen biker. Alexandra was the most ambitious maid I met, with dreams of studying at university. She got fantastic support from her boss; he bought her a motorbike to help her to save time, to get home from work and study."

Expensive presents are one thing, but the most interesting story Andrej had to tell was that of Edgar Peichoto. “His first years in the city were spent homeless, destitute. He somehow, extremely luckily, got a job as a waiter where one day he happened to serve a man called Roberto Marinho. Now Marinho just happened to be the most influential man in Rio at that time, the publisher of Brazil’s biggest magazine, O GLOBO. Marinho hired him as a servant in his own home, where he was promoted to the head, and eventually became his boss’s right-hand man. Marinho even went as far as buying Edgar the house opposite his own, and Edgar became a respected citizen with his own maid.”

Brazil’s trademark extrovertism manifests itself visibly in everyday life. In the streets strangers will converse at the bus stop just to pass the time, and to an extent this comfort with conversation and expression prevents a great deal of harboured animosity. It also goes some way to explaining how it is possible to have sincere relationships between servant and employer. For as much as the divide between rich and poor remains a veritable gulf, most Brazilians would never let something as trivial as economic status prevent a healthy conversation.

•    U.N. Human Development Report, 2008.