I SURRENDERED UNTIL THE ROCKS BEGAN TO SPEAK
2015This series of black and white photographs emerged from long walks along the road that cuts through São Vicente’s geographical heart, from the edge of the city to the small fishing village of Calhau. It was an attempt to listen to the island from within, by moving slowly and attentively through a landscape that gradually revealed a quiet, lingering spell.
The work seeks to make visible the undercurrents that move through rock, wind, and light, markers of presence that reveal themselves through silent narratives of time, passage, and tension.
Portraits emerge from brief, passing encounters, glimpses of people whose presence carries their own gravity, their gaze often charged with hesitation, curiosity, or defiance, as if the camera had entered into a silent negotiation. At times, the camera hovers the land in fleeting motion, leaning into blur, dust, and mirages. At others, it turns skyward, as if drawn by forces that escape descriptiveness.
The road became less a route than a listening device, tracing a choreography of presence, heat, and delusion. Walking became a way to tune into something unsettled and elusive, something that could only be felt when one wanders without asking too much.
These images also bear the physical traces of their making: dust, humidity, and light pressing against the emulsion, the breath of São Vicente imprinted upon the film itself. These textures became another manifestation of the landscape’s energy, part of the island’s own signature on the work.
What remains is not the narration of place, but the trace of attunement, the slow accumulation of gestures, hesitation, and refusals. The photographs mark a quiet surrender to what could be felt but not held.
The work seeks to make visible the undercurrents that move through rock, wind, and light, markers of presence that reveal themselves through silent narratives of time, passage, and tension.
Portraits emerge from brief, passing encounters, glimpses of people whose presence carries their own gravity, their gaze often charged with hesitation, curiosity, or defiance, as if the camera had entered into a silent negotiation. At times, the camera hovers the land in fleeting motion, leaning into blur, dust, and mirages. At others, it turns skyward, as if drawn by forces that escape descriptiveness.
The road became less a route than a listening device, tracing a choreography of presence, heat, and delusion. Walking became a way to tune into something unsettled and elusive, something that could only be felt when one wanders without asking too much.
These images also bear the physical traces of their making: dust, humidity, and light pressing against the emulsion, the breath of São Vicente imprinted upon the film itself. These textures became another manifestation of the landscape’s energy, part of the island’s own signature on the work.
What remains is not the narration of place, but the trace of attunement, the slow accumulation of gestures, hesitation, and refusals. The photographs mark a quiet surrender to what could be felt but not held.