Training: Social sciences BA: 2 years, unfinished - Universidade Federal Fluminense, Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Photography BA - Universade Estacio de Sa, Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

 

Makes:  Fine art photography

 

Methods: Digital photography

 

Most recently: After being born and raised, and living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, I moved to Philadelphia in June 2011 due to my wife's fellowship (she is a doctor at CHOP). I've been working with a large number of photographs that I took from Rio before I left and some new ones from Philly. Knowing that we were moving and not knowing how long would we would stay, I took many pictures of Rio to post-process here. I've been exploring Philly since we moved and I'm finding new spots to get pictures almost every week. I've been posting new photos on my website since then, alternating pictures from Brazil and from Philly. I've joined InLiquid in the end of 2011. The latest event I participated in was InLiquid's Benefit v.12.

 

Next up: I'm participating in several art festivals this spring and I'm also starting to look for galleries that would like to show my photographs.

 

What inspires you?
The change of scenery has been very positive to my work. While lots of artists like to photograph people, my work was never focused on that. In the beginning of my career I used to do a lot of close up and abstract photographs. Even self-portraits were just abstract photographs with some depictions of loose, detached parts of my body. I've broadened my view to a much larger scale, photographing and processing cityscapes in a very personal way, to demonstrate the places I've lived and visit. I believe places can show a lot about people, sometimes even more than portraits. The way that cities influence people is more striking to me than individual characters alone. Moving from a huge city like Rio (6 million habitants), with all its beauty and social disparities to a US city that is 4 times smaller is impacting. The less chaotic environment, the order and organization of a US capital and the incredible drop in social gap, at least not as visible as in Rio, brings additional substance to my work.

 

I studied Social Sciences for 2 years, but realized that I always wanted to mix my interest of that with visual arts. While growing up I always showed a lot of interest and appreciation for art, but never found a way to express myself other than drawing, which I never really considered myself good at. Watching a close friend teach another some basic photographic knowledge made me think of photography as something interesting to study. It was a perfect combination of a way to express myself and work with art and sociology at the same time.

                

Changing from film to digital gave me more control over the subjects of my photography. My photos were always representations of personal visions of my surroundings, but when done in film the results were experimental, more research. I chose the subject, but my final impression was something that I needed to wait and had less control over it. Moving to digital gave me more power to have the final result over the subject chosen, a very personal and accurate representation of my idea. My art comes after the capture it, is not the naked eye literal vision of the place, my memories and feelings towards the subject are expressed then by the post-process techniques applied.

 

People have their own personal feelings towards art. My current subjects sometimes create interest because they are already known though depict in a non obvious way. It's hard to believe that they will share the same feelings  I did when the picture was made, but having additional emotions towards the images and understanding they are not just stills of subjects, that there is a deeper history behind each photograph is one of my main goals.