Down a small back street in the heart of colonial Salvador is a man in an iced-pink room. He sits on a three-legged wooden stool, hunched over a low-rise workbench. Spread out before him is a fan of tiny tarnished metal tools.
Rosalvo Bonfim works in a dolls' hospital. He is the doctor in charge of all the broken or neglected toys in the city. There was a time when Salvador had dozens of such hospitals nestling in its historic buildings, but nowadays Bonfim's establishment is the only one left.
For the last 30 years the dolls' doctor has been repairing damaged playthings. He started off as a trainee when he was just 15, under the watchful eyes of an elderly doctor in a well-known hospital.
"An old man who had worked with dolls for years taught me everything," says Bonfim. "He was a family friend and after my father died he asked if I wanted to start earning my own living. It took me about six months to learn to become a proper dolls' doctor and when I finished I helped him in his business."
During the early days, the dolls that Bonfim was asked to repair were more fragile than they are today. They were often made of porcelain, with glass eyes, and he learned to carefully restore the toys to their former glory.
"The old man taught me how to do all sorts of things," he says. "He showed me how to sew so I could mend their clothes and repair the stuffing of teddy bears. And I learned how to reapply dolls' make-up on their lips, cheeks and eyes in special paint.
"My friends laughed because I even blow-dried dolls' hair because we had to have them looking beautiful when they were returned to their owners."
In the early days, when Bonfim was still working as a junior doctor for the old man, business was busy. Before throwaway consumerism made toys cheap and plentiful, there were always queues of people outside the dolls' hospital waiting to get their playthings fixed.
"It didn't matter whether they were rich or poor", recalls Bonfim, "they still used to visit us. Toys mean a lot to people and they don't like throwing them away because they are broken."
But then times changed. Where people once took the time to mend their dolls, they instead started to buy cheaply-made replacements. Eventually, like most of the other dolls' hospitals in Salvador, the old man had to close his business.
Left without a job, Bonfim got work in a local supermarket stacking shelves. "It was awful. I loved my work but nobody would hire me as a dolls' doctor and at the time I couldn't afford to start on my own."
After several years of dead-end work, Bonfim managed to save enough money to open a small hospital in the front room of his house.
His hospital room is lined with dolls - in various states of undress - and other assorted toys. They are stacked high on shelves that have been put up on all four walls. On the floor are several toddler-sized dolls, dressed in 1970s clothes, that have been long forgotten by customers.
These days, most of Bonfim's doctoring is on plastic dolls or electric toys. He has had to learn about the mechanics of crying babies, for example, and about remote-controlled cars.
Because his is the only remaining dolls' hospital in the city, Bonfim has a steady flow of business. Most of his customers are old women who want a beloved childhood plaything restored to pass onto their grandchildren. But he regularly gets children with a broken, but still favourite, toy knocking at his door.
"They are brought here by their parents who remember when there were loads of dolls' hospitals in the city," he says. "I even mend dolls for the granddaughter of the speaker of Brazil's senate."
Bonfim mends about 150 toys a month, and despite the low pay says he is determined to continue working as a dolls' doctor.
"I've had problems, like the time all the toys came from the Far East and I couldn't get the parts to mend them," he says as he fixes a plastic blue eye into a little blonde doll.
"But I love my work so much I carried on. There is nothing better than mending a toy for someone. It's the most rewarding job in the world."
Bonfim says that leaving a toy to be repaired is often an emotional experience. "Whether they are young or old, people get very upset. The children call me uncle and I have to promise to look after their dolls and not hurt them."
The dolls' hospital doctor is determined that the art of mending toys should not die out. Currently, he is saving up to buy a little car to use as an "ambulance", so he can pick his patients up from home. And one day he hopes to employ a nurse so he can look after urgent cases in an "accident and emergency" wing of his hospital.
"I want to expand," he says. "There are no other dolls' hospitals in this city and it is up to me to make sure we don't die out. The only problem is no one wants to learn the trade anymore. And if I don't teach somebody I'll soon become the only old man mending dolls in the whole of Brazil."