Book Description
Anjos Proibidos grew out of a project that Cabral began in the late 1980s and which became the subject of two shows in São Paulo art galleries in 1987 and 1989. Cabral's "anjos" came from a variety of backgrounds. Cabral discovered one of his most beautiful models, Lady Milena, age 12, selling pasties on the street in São Paulo; Priscila, 13, is the daughter of a photographer and a publicist; and Licia was an aspiring model. Regardless, Cabral approached his subjects in the same unaffected way: "My photographs are very simple. I treat the works delicately, with a subtle eroticism, not like the type of photos that you would see in Playboy," says Cabral. "The girls, as they are portrayed in my book ... exist only for a few fleeting moments in front of my camera."

In saying this, Cabral does not mean that his models are utterly devoid of sensuality. Rather, they are "angels" because they do not appear to be of the world--the adult world--in which they have been captured. Instead they inhabit a realm of sensuality that is still in the process of becoming. They are "forbidden" because having been fleetingly captured, they must be freed again to return to that realm to which they belong.