I’m still blogging beautiful days from 3 years ago. I just can’t help but visit the client galleries sometimes and gather all the kind of nostalgia I can. It makes me feel so grateful for this journey, and it makes me deliver myself more and more to every new day that I am able to create something new. And it’s impactful the kind of supreme detail we can remember things about, even feelings we used to have, just by looking at a moment in a photograph. Even to myself this is such an intense experience - to relive over and over again the beauty of a day so very special and so very unique. I am always so grateful to be able to do this. To give myself fully to the ability of putting little bits of what I see, the way I see them, and what I believe in on a little composition that can come to mean so much to someone. And it’s the lost details I love most rather than the most expected ones. Sometimes you see something in a way nobody does and it’s there that lies your heart.
I’m still blogging beautiful days from 3 years ago. I just can’t help but visit the client galleries sometimes and gather all the kind of nostalgia I can. It makes me feel so grateful for this journey, and it makes me deliver myself more and more to every new day that I am able to create something new. And it’s impactful the kind of supreme detail we can remember things about, even feelings we used to have, just by looking at a moment in a photograph. Even to myself this is such an intense experience - to relive over and over again the beauty of a day so very special and so very unique. I am always so grateful to be able to do this. To give myself fully to the ability of putting little bits of what I see, the way I see them, and what I believe in on a little composition that can come to mean so much to someone. And it’s the lost details I love most rather than the most expected ones. Sometimes you see something in a way nobody does and it’s there that lies your heart.
I've been thinking about this session very often lately, yet again. It strikes me as pure luck that strangers find me and feel that what I create moves them. It moves me for the luck I gather to be able to have the humble gratitude to be the chosen one. Picking someone to navigate who you are and what you have together is tough and should resonate within you immensely. The choice of photographer should be an important one. I am so very grateful for being the choice of so many beautiful people.
Lisa and Seva are beautiful beings. I still don't have words to explain how their relationship moves me deeply. Sometimes you have quietness in sessions which translates a lot of emotion and sometimes you have giggling full of fun ones that could not express that emotion better, either. This is one of the most honest, raw and happy sessions I've ever had. I think you can see why.
Eu não peço muito. Dêem-me um passeio, espírito aventureiro, uma praia escondida e a vossa verdadeira essência e eu farei fotografias em felicidade. E vocês passarão um serão incrível a serem vocês mesmos exactamente como o são quando estão sozinhos, apenas um com o outro. Esta deveria ser a verdadeira razão de querer congelar um certo momento no tempo. Ninguém tem de estar noivo, ou casado ou a celebrar mais do que vocês mesmos e a forma como sentem acerca um do outro. A Sílvia e o João sabem isso. Não apenas porque a Sílvia é uma pessoa e fotógrafa incrível e o João tem uma alma de aventureiro mas porque os dois entendem o poder da arte. O poder de criar algo para nós mesmos. Se o mundo tem a oportunidade de ter um glimpse disso, é pura sorte. Porque o que realmente importa é quem nós somos e a forma como a pessoa que amamos é um reflexo disso mesmo, e o melhor que eles nos conseguem fazer ser. É só isso. Sem truques. Sem momentos falsos. Estas, são todas reais. Eles queriam ir a esta praia tão difícil de chegar e tão escondida e eu estava louca para o fazer. Essa sou eu. Eu vou ao fim do mundo para criar. Eu vou até ao fim do mundo para materializar uma visão em algo que eu sinto ser bonito. Eu só quero é clientes como estes. Clientes que se tornam amigos, não apenas porque temos a oportunidade de criar arte tão bonita juntos, mas porque temos a oportunidade de abrir os nossos corações. E isso acaba por ser a melhor coisa deste mundo. Vejam a prova.
I do not ask much. Just give me a hike, adventurous spirit, a hidden beach and your true soul and I will make photos in happiness. And you will have a wonderful time just being yourself like you are used to be when you are alone with just the other. This should be the true reason to want to freeze a certain moment in time. You shouldn't have to be engaged, or married or celebrating something but yourselves and the way you feel about each other. Sílvia and João know that. Not only because Sílvia is a wonderful person and photographer and João has an adventurer's soul too, but because they understand the power of art. The power of creating for yourself. If the world gets to get a peek of that, it's just luck. Because what matters is who you are and the way the person you love is a reflection of just that, and the best that they can make you be. That's it. No tricks. No fake moments. These, are all real. They wanted to go to this hidden tricky beach and I was head over heels about it. That's who I am. I go miles to create. I go miles to shape a vision into something I think is beautiful. I just want clients like these. Clients that become friends, not only because we got to make beautiful art together, but because we got to open our hearts. And that just happens to be the best thing in this world. See proof.
Sabrina is beautiful inside and out. She's the kind of spirit that inspires others without even saying a word. I've met Sabrina a few years ago, we worked together and even though we never talked on serious philosophical things, I got her right away and knew she was and is an inspiring soul and the type this world should have more of.
She contacted me saying that she wanted a few pictures of herself. She followed my work and always thought about doing a session, but thought she would be no match to the girls I photograph all the time. That made me giggle. If she knew that all the girls I photograph say the exact same thing she would laugh too. They do. And that is why I created the project BeRaw afterwards. Because I believe in a project that makes you see yourself how others see you. A project that makes you feel sexy, beautiful and comfortable in your own skin. I pretty much think she nailed it this day. See proof.
Os quatro primeiros frames são das minhas duas irmãs. Elas têm um trabalho que amam que não podia ser mais longe de ser modelo. Elas só me deixam a mim fotografá-las e é porque eu ao princípio as obrigava (ninguém diria, certo?). Eu apareço nos dois frames seguintes. Em modo auto-retrato, mas a defender também o que quero fazer com este projecto (não seria justo se também eu não tivesse abraçado a minha própria crença se não assim). Esta intro vem a propósito de eu estar a desenvolver um novo projecto. Um projecto com o qual pretendo que as mulheres, acima de tudo mas não só, percam um pouco o estigma de se verem como realmente são, mulheres, pelo medo de nos rotularem como algo que não somos. Não é um projecto de empoderamento. Não pretendo sequer banalizar esse termo ou contexto, pois não é de todo essa a questão. Mas quero que as mulheres se sintam femininas ou o que mais desejarem, que se sintam quem se querem sentir sem complexos. Sem julgarem que só as modelos se conseguem sentir "sexy" ou confortáveis no corpo que têm. Quero dar-vos a entender um lado vosso que nunca viram retratado, e que percam duas horas a ver o reflexo disso na minha camera e no meu olhar, e depois nas fotografias que vos entregarei, para sempre. No fundo é uma sessão individual mas com um teor diferente, mais íntimo, mais cru e sem capas, e para mulheres que aceitam ser o início de um projecto que espero que ajude a alterar mentalidades acerca do corpo feminino e da forma como no fundo o que mais interessa é cada pessoa ser uma pessoa, cada mulher uma mulher. E nós somos muito mais que um corpo. Mas que este é nosso e temos o direito de o celebrar, seja ele como for.
This comes as an intro for a new project I want to celebrate. I want women to approach me and want to be photographed in raw mode. Like this. The real you. These are not shots of models. These are a women, my sisters, me and client friends that never were ever photographed by anyone but me. I've never even approached a model agency or photographed professional models. Because even models might want to be photographed in more relaxed, casual and cozy ambients. A reflection of the real you. That is who I am. No fancy settings. Just me and the person in front of my lens. Real people leading real lives, women with daughters and sons who want to break the stigma that the body is shameful and the women body belongs to the ones they are in love with (parents, husbands, sons). No. Their body belongs to them, and as weddings, birthdays, special occasions, they deserve to be celebrated. Because they are part of what we are. As women, daughters and mothers.
Dêem-me boa luz, amizade e felicidade e eu dou-vos isto. Nada substitui a amizade. Nem mesmo no amor, este subsiste sem amizade. É o alicerce de tudo. E uma das minhas coisas preferidas é documentá-lo. Documentar grupos de amigos, raparigas ou rapazes, que por um final de tarde decidem documentar essa amizade para sempre. Há variadas e diferentes formas de o fazer mas esta assim é das minhas preferidas: um brinde (ou vários), muitas gargalhadas e uma celebração sincera e crua do que são juntas. Nem sempre tem de significar algo específico se não o quão amigos são, mas neste caso a Raquel a casar-se numa semana e estando todas em Portugal algumas vindas de Angola, foi o jeito especial em despedida dos últimos momentos ainda solteira. Decidam por vocês se não vale a pena celebrar assim e documentá-lo!
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Give me great light, friendship and happiness and I'll give you this. Nothing ever substitutes friendship. Not even love can subsist without it. It's the foundation for it all. And one of my favourite things in the world is to document it. Document groups of friends, whether it is girls or boys, who for a day decide to document their friendship for all time. There's so many different ways to do so, and no one better to decide it than you, but this is one of my favourite ways: a toast (or many), a lot of laughter and an honest and raw celebration of what you are together. It doesn't always have to be something in particular if not only because you are indeed friends, but in this case Raquel was about to get married in one week, and being at last all of them together in Portugal, a few of them just arrived from Angola, it was in a special way the goodbye to the last few moments of this beautiful girl as a single beautiful person. Decide for yourself if it isn't worth it to celebrate it while you document it!