"I get the feeling not many people in Brazil are thinking about their superannuation." This is the assessment of Melbourne photographer Rodney Schaffer, whose four visits to Rio de Janeiro since 2008 have yielded images of a side of life we're unlikely to see much of when the Olympic Games begin there next week.

"The one thing you notice about the Brazilians is that they don't really think about the past, they don't really think about the future," says Schaffer. "They're all about the present." Bearing witness to this living for the now, Schaffer says, involves doing what the locals do and going where they go.

"So go to a local soccer game. Go watch the samba rehearsals in the build-up to Carnival. Have a bodysurf at Ipanema. Have a beer where the cab drivers might congregate for a beer."

It's a strategy that has produced a series of photographs that illustrate sharp contrasts in the Cidade Maravilhosa (Marvellous City, as Rio is known), from poverty in the favelas to the opulent playgrounds of its more fortunate citizens just across the street. Schaffer says he expected Rio to be "an out of control Surfers Paradise bristling with menace " but found a "historically and geographically beautiful city loaded with contradictions and an energy that made me feel young again".

His photographic kit was simple: a Hasselblad XPan camera (which produces wide, letterbox-shaped images), one 45-millimetre lens and negative film. Gaffer tape was used to hide the brand name and around the lens to make it look less appealing but Schaffer says the sight of him fiddling around with film was enough to put off any would-be thieves.

Schaffer says that while you can't avoid the social issues confronting Rio a combination of its physical beauty, packed in between the mountains and the sea, and its carioca (the term for the people or anything from Rio) spirit means a city that probably shouldn't work just does.

He puts that down in part to the lack of the sort of generation gap found in most Western countries. And music. "You go to a club and there will be three generations at a table," he says. "They will be dancing – grandmother, mother, son. It's the glue that holds it all together."

And what about the greatest show on earth about to descend on Rio? "Brazilians are the least punctual people in the world … I think the Olympics might be quite interesting."

Unseen Rio: Colour Photographs of the Cidade Maravilhosa is showing at the Colour Factory, 409-429 Gore St, Fitzroy, Melbourne, until August 20.