By Elissa Curtis and Emma Margolin
In just over a week, all eyes will be focused on Brazil's (hopefully completed) infrastructure and shiny new stadiums for the world's most popular sporting event, the FIFA World Cup. But behind the month-long soccer tournament and celebration lurks an underground community, one cast to the margins of Brazilian society.
Photographer Pep Bonet sought to change that by turning his lens on Brazil's transgender and gender variant community – in particular, the segment relegated to drag entertainment and prostitution.
Originally, the project was meant to focus on HIV/AIDS, an epidemic that has affected the country's poorest and most remote areas. But once on the streets of Rio de Janeiro and Fortazela in April 2012, Bonet found a different kind of plague – one of social stigma and police brutality.
More:
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/brazil-transsexual-community-marginalized
