Abenteuer Reportagefotografie – Podcast über visuelles Storytelling

Kai Behrmann: Visueller Storyteller und Fotograf

Since 11/2016 426 Episoden

Gustavo Minas: Maximum Shadow, Minimal Light (ARCHIV)

19.11.2023 48 min

Zusammenfassung & Show Notes

Gustavo Minas gilt als einer der weltweit besten Streetfotografen: Der Brasilianer versteht es meisterhaft, mit Hilfe von harten Schatten, Spiegelungen und Reflexionen aus alltäglichen Situationen komplexe Bilder zu gestalten.

Wie er sein „Sehen“ entwickelt hat, welche Schritte dahin nötig waren – und vor allem, wie auch du sensibler für den Zauber des Alltäglichen wirst – darüber sprechen wir in diesem Interview.

„Wandering with an empty mind taught me how to see.“ Gustavo Minas

(Interview in English)

Diese Folge erschien erstmals am 11. September 2022

Gustavo Minas im Internet

Webseite: https://www.gustavominas.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gustavominas/

Video-Kurse auf der Lernplattform "Domestika": Einführung in den Streetfotografie & Streetfotografie bei Nacht

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Mit neuem Konzept ist der GATE7-Podcast nun der Podcast der interaktiven Lernplattform “Abenteuer Reportagefotografie”. Hier dreht sich alles um visuelles Storytelling in der Street- und Reportagefotografie.

Thomas B. Jones und ich helfen dir, mit deinen Bildern spannende Geschichten zu erzählen - ob in der Familie, in der Freizeit oder auf Reisen. Lerne, wie du die Bilder machst, die dich und andere begeistern.

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Transkript

I ask myself all the time, what can you teach in street photography? And I think that we can basically, more than teach, I think we can inspire people to see the world with their own eyes, something like this. By showing your trajectory and how you started and how you develop your style by studying and by trying different things, I think I can actually inspire people more than teaching and how to see or how to compose. Thomas Jones, with whom I also do adventure reportage photography, for a month in Cuba, more precisely in Havana. Similar to the time with Pia Parolin at the Côte d'Azur in the summer of 2022, where Thomas and I, among other things, intensively sharpened the manuscript for our We have been working on stories with pictures in the book published by D-Punkt. We have been photographing a lot of reports and street photography on the streets of Havanna. We have already reported on this in detail. We have come back with many stories and pictures, which have flowed into webinars, podcasts, videos and what-else in the past weeks and months. Take a look and listen again. Especially on the YouTube channel of Thomas Jones you will find numerous videos. This time Thomas unfortunately stayed at home and I went to Cuba alone. I will spend a month in Havana, throw out the fish again and see what I can find around the Malecon for motifs and stories. A creative retreat in Cuba's capital. I'm already very excited about the meeting and the pictures and yes, Cuba is known for a lot of things, but not for its rapid internet That's why I've already got a few episodes from the archive so that you can be on the road at the time, I'm not quite on the content here in the gate 7 podcast have to give up and as I said, I will of course not be lazy in the sun and drink Cuba Libre, but also. I promise you I will take a lot of photos. And then there will be a lot of new exciting stories. And who knows, maybe there will be a photo trip to Cuba at some point. In any case, you can write to me if you plan to travel to Cuba. I am happy to pass on my contacts to local guides, who can certainly help you to look even more behind the scenes in Cuba's capital. But before we take the big leap and maybe at some point leave for Cuba with a photo trip, it's time to go abroad again in 2024. Next to our Street Photography Workshop in Hamburg, right in front of the Photopia, more precisely on October 9, 2024. In 2024 we will go back to Helsinki and Lisbon. I just came back from Lisbon. In the beginning of November we had our first workshop. The workshop was quickly booked and we had perfect conditions and a lot of fun. It was a great group and I'm already looking forward to repeating the whole thing next year. But you shouldn't underestimate Helsinki either. It's definitely worth stopping by. I have lived in Finland for a long time and I am always happy to return there, especially to Helsinki. For me, it is a wonderful city, located directly by the sea, or rather by the water and with a very special atmosphere, especially in the summer when the workshop takes place at the end of July. I am just happy to discover the city together with you. Helsinki is definitely a city that has a lot of charm and a lot of flair and it is definitely worth being discovered. If that sounds interesting to you, then take a look at the show notes. There you will find the clickable links with further information about our workshops. You can do the whole thing directly if you want to on the website under www.abenteuer-reportagefotografie.de. Abenteuer Reportage Photographie is the project. That the content of Gate 7 is put into practice. A project that I'm doing together with Thomas Jones and in which all that I discuss with my guests here in the podcast is put into practice. And in different forms, in different formats, like webinars, podcasts, workshops, all very interactive. And meanwhile a very active community has formed, where we are now more than 100 participants. We exchange everything about street photography, reporting and visual storytelling. If you feel like it, feel free to stop by. You can find the link in the show notes, in your podcast app or, as I said, directly on the website www.abenteuer-reportage-fotografie.de, Yes, and as I said, at this point, I think the right time has come for me year with many lectures, with many workshops, with many actions around the Gate 7 and adventure reportage photography to take a breath, to take a break and then to pick up the momentum again. Yes, and maybe it's a good opportunity for you to deal a little more intensively with the previous content on Gate 7 in peace. And then look forward to the new interviews that will certainly come in the coming weeks and months. I will definitely come to Cuba. On the one hand, of course, what I experience in Cuba, on the other hand, I also have to work on what I did photographically in Colombia more than a year ago, as well as on the last trips to Helsinki and Lisbon. There is still a lot in the archive. Then Cuba is added and in mid-January it will be back to me. In my second home country, Argentina, so a whole lot that is on the note. If you happen to be in Buenos Aires at the beginning of 2024 and want to have an individual photo tour, then feel free to contact me. From January there will of course also be fresh episodes here, but so that there is no radio silence on the channel in the meantime, I went deep into the archive and looked for a few episodes that, one or the other reason it is worth it to be exposed again. In addition, the number of listeners has increased significantly in the past few months. In short, Gate7 will also break the 1 million mark when it comes to downloads. Of course, I am very happy about that. Many thanks to you out there, who regularly listen to Gate7, that makes me happy. And of course, thanks to everyone who recently discovered and subscribed to Gate7, because you are also one of them. Then you joined us when there were already over 350 episodes and probably you haven't heard all the archive episodes yet. In this respect, this episode is definitely new to you. This time it's Gustavo Minas, a street photographer who is currently one of the most exciting and best representatives in this genre for me. Gustavo comes from Brazil. Yes, an interview that has inspired me a lot and I think it's definitely worth it to shine here again. I wish you a lot of fun when you hear the interview for the first time today, but also when you've heard it before, then ... Is by far still something new that you discover and perceive that you didn't notice the first time. In any case, it's worth listening to it again. Have fun with Gustavo Minas. Before we start, a very short request at this point. I would be very happy if you would do exactly what I did, namely to go deep into the archive and see which episodes you may not have heard yet and choose your favorite episode and share it on social media, Facebook or Instagram. With your friends, with your acquaintances who are also interested in photography and storytelling. That would mean a lot to me and also help to make this podcast a little more famous. In the last few weeks and months, as I said, I have been able to notice a significant increase in listeners, which I am very, very happy about. And even if you want to help me a little bit, want to support the work I'm doing here to reach even more people who are interested in visual storytelling, then I would be very grateful if you could do a little bit of advertising and a little bit of drumming for G7. So, now really straight into the repetition of the interview with Gustavo Minas. Have fun! This interview was recorded in the context of Abenteuer Reportage Fotografie. There you have the possibility to get even closer to the podcast and the guests. You are part of the recordings of the interviews live via Zoom and can then ask the guests your questions. If this is interesting for you, feel free to stop by at abenteuer-reportagefotografie.de. So, now straight into the interview with Gustavo Minas. Have fun! Hello and welcome, Gustavo. It's a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you, Kai. Thank you for the invitation. Yeah, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast, Gustavo. I came across your work last year when I was at the Photo Festival in Baden. And I met Lois Lammerhuber there, who published your book, Maximum Shadow, Minimal Light. And yeah ever since then I've been a huge fan I followed you or follow you on Instagram and looking through your or this book it's a collection of beautiful images and everybody who knows street photography a little bit and has been out on the street knows that it's a body of work or it's the kind of pictures you don't take from day one on as a street photographer it takes a lot of time to develop the vision, to develop the style, to get there. And this is also what I'm very interested to know from my guests, their evolution from when they started to where they are right now as a photographer. I was watching your course on Domestika and there you talked about a pivotal point when you were kind of frustrated with your own photography, with your results. Maybe we can start at that point. Take us back to that point and explain a little bit how you felt. I think it was around 2007. In 2007 was when I first bought a digital camera. I had studied journalism in university, so I knew the basics of shutter speed and ISO, etc. But during the university, we had no idea of photographic language. We just studied some Cartier-Bresson and some Kappa, which are big names in photojournalism. And that was that. So when I first bought my digital camera, I was, I don't know, I was, I think I was a bit lost, but super excited at the same time with all the possibilities of digital. I could do now long exposures and I could experiment a lot and then that's what I did. But then, yeah, but these pictures were not taking me anywhere. I traveled to South America for a couple of months and I came back and of course, I liked two or three pictures, but, you know, and these were flicker times. And, okay, I had some feedback, but, you know, that was blind, I guess. And then in 2009, I decided to enroll in a year-long course with Carlos Moreira. For those who don't know him, he's a kind of Brazilian Cartier-Bresson. He's a guy who photographed Sao Paulo and Santos in the seaside since the 60s. So he was a proper master and he was in his 70s, late 70s, when I took the course. And this totally changed my life because in the first half of the course, we studied all the black and white masters, Bresson, Cartier, Liffry, Lander, Ager. Robert Frank and, you know, all these big names and, okay, and they, of course, I liked their pictures, but then, I don't know, they just looked a bit dated for me because it wasn't something that I could replicate in my daily life, you know, because, you know. So in the second half of the course, we started to study the color masters, Harry Greer, Alex Webb, Pinchasol, Viggo Stone, and then, I don't know, I just felt that they were a bit more or much more contemporary and their pictures just look at more like with the things that I was seeing on the streets of Sao Paulo, especially Harry Grier because he had worked a lot in Morocco and you know that kind of light that he uses just reminded of the light that we had here in Brazil. So yeah basically Grier really blew my mind and was one of the first photo books that I bought and I would remember just checking his book. It was just, you know, a photopush book, which is very... Small and then after that I bought Lumière Blanche, which is one of his first books, but then I remember living through his books like a lot and then I think he really got into my mind and I just decided that okay that's something that I want to do, I want to work with light and with color and but then the thing is that I was working as a journalist in São Paulo so I didn't have all day to do this so I just had and I couldn't do this in the late afternoons, which for me is when things get very really interesting so I could just do this early mornings before I go to work and that's what I decided to do. I just started waking up very early in the morning like 6 a.m 6 30 that's what I still do nowadays and you know I just started walking around Sao Paulo and basically was guided by light. I didn't know where I was going but if I saw some light on the corner I would just turn that corner and then you know if the next life would take me there, to the left, to the right. And then that Sao Paulo was a new city for me as well. So this was a way of discovering the city. And yeah, so life was my first passion, photography. And of course, after this. After some years, I discovered the power of reflections, especially when I moved to Brasilia and started working at the bus station here, which has a lot of buses and snack bars. And so they just, I don't know. And then, yeah. And of course, after a year, I just started, I guess, incorporating more influences into my work and studying other photographers. And I think I'm a mix of all of them, of the photographers that I like, of movie makers that I like with my surroundings and my background. Yeah, I think that's it. I don't think there's a secret formula to find your own style. I think you have to photograph a lot. And I was very, you know, my first pictures, my first three, four years were really, really bad. And but then I just I think I'm very dedicated. And after some time, it just, you know, I started getting some key Yeah. A lot of hard work and a steady evolution to start simple and then get more complex. You said that first you started to follow the light. There's a beautiful sentence in the book, in the preface to the book, there you say, wandering with an empty mind taught me how to see. So that means you went out on the streets with no preconceived idea of what you wanted to photograph. Exactly. Yeah, I was very, I don't know, I wasn't, I was working as a journalist in the daily newspaper. So I wasn't after, you know, big facts or protests or manifestations or things like that. I was trying to escape from journalism, actually. So I was looking more for poetry, for lyric moments, for things that were beautiful, that caught my attention in any way. So yeah, light was my first, the thing that attracted me most, and then colors, of course. And yeah, and one of the beautiful things about street photography for me is that if you go out looking for something, you just tend to see just that thing that you're looking for. But if you're not looking for anything specific, you know, your mind is more open. You end up seeing things that you were expecting and then expected things in the end of the day that are the most special for me. Yeah, the pictures they emerge then and over a period of time you assemble a body of work and maybe then with some time some common theme, some thread turns up. I heard you also talk about that, that sometimes you look back after a while at your pictures and then something you realize that there there is something that connects these pictures and out of these single images emerges an essay or a project. Can you elaborate a little bit on that idea? Yeah I'm very bad at formulating or thinking beforehand about a project. Oh I'm going to do a project about this thing. So my way of working is basically walking and taking pictures and after some months or after some years, I just look back at my archives and I think, oh, maybe I have something here. Maybe I have 10 strong pictures. And this was the case with my first project, which is about my hometown. It's a very small town in the countryside of Brazil. And I would photograph there. I just wasn't living there anymore, but I would photograph there when I went to see my parents. And this is a very, you know, specific region of the city, which is in the borders between the city and the rural zone, so it has a lot of personality, how the walls are colorful and people are very characteristic. So after a couple of years, I just look back at this and I think, oh, I think I have something going on here and this could be an idea for a project. And I think this was around 2012. So I just decided to take a chance in one of those street photography contests. It was called London Street Photography Contest or a festival, something like that. I think it doesn't exist anymore. And then I just sent these pictures before maybe my hometown and I was the runner up of the contest. So of course, this got me very excited because it was just a beginner. And then I had lived in London for some time in 2005, working as a waiter, just for a gap year after university. So I went back to London and saw my pictures exhibited there. So it was a, and yeah, and with the bus station was the same thing. Bus station is my best known project, you know, and I moved to Brazil in 2014. My wife was leaving, my then girlfriend was leaving here and I passed the test to be a civil servant for the government to work as a journalist here. And then I came from Sao Paulo to Brasília and I was very disappointed with the city because the city is very strange a bit like it was built to be the government center so it's a bit lifeless and though and then I decided to to go to the satellite cities which which are the cities in the surroundings of Brasília where people who work here live and by doing this I was always passing by the bus station almost every day. And I was just doing three or four, just some pictures there before taking a bus. And then after some time, I looked back at these pictures and I thought, oh, maybe my project or this project is not about the satellite city, it's just about the bus station. And yeah, that's how this project came about. And this really opened up doors for me. This is the project that Lois Lambert-Huber got to know before inviting me to do the book. So yeah, I think as street photographers, we tend to work a lot with individual photos, with single photos. That's my way of working too. But then when you have like a team, which kind of, it's a bit related to documentary photography, it's easier for you to circulate your work, to show your work around and to apply for grants and stuff like that. So with the bus station, this was the case. Yeah, and it could also be the focus on a specific area to photograph. You said that you took lots of pictures in your hometown and then at the bus station. So two very specific areas that you went to over and over again. How important is that in your mind to concentrate on a specific area other or instead of just walking around randomly and going to new places every day? I think for me, this is key, for example, because, of course, I like to travel to different exotic places, to Cuba, to New York, to see different things. And I love doing this kind of thing. But of course, I think that my deeper work really emerges when I'm photographing the same place over and over. For example, the bus station project is now a zine and I had some exhibitions, but I still keep coming back because it's probably the only place in Brasilia where I can get people enough to do, you know, very busy picture with lots of layers and stuff like that. And what happened with the bus station, for example, is that when I started photographing there, I was, my pictures were very descriptive. I was just trying to show what the place looked like. And, you know, they were very formal, was just describing the activities and just, you know, they weren't sophisticated at all. were just, you know, these were my first impressions. And then because I had to go back there almost every day, I just, you know, I got bored with my own pictures. So I just started developing new ways of seeing the big the place and new ways of photographing it. And this is specific. And the reflections was where the word the thing that I found to represent the place in a more complex way, I think, because one day it was getting to the bus station and I tried to photograph this bus driver leaving the station of the bus and when I tried to photograph him when I got home I realized that reflected on the glass of the bus I could see a lot of passengers who were in the upper platform of the bus station and this just gave me a you know an Eureka thing something like this. I realized that I could show not only what was in front of me but also what was in my back and around me and I just realized that this maybe would be a better way of representing the reality because you know we're seeing what's in front of us but we're also hearing noises and smelling things and you know it's a more complete way of representing reality for me that's why I got so obsessed with shooting reflections because I could you know just show a 260 degrees view of the scene sometimes. Yeah, so slowly developing this style that is typical for you now, the use of light, harsh shadows and reflections and very complex layered compositions. Gustavo, I prepared a presentation so we can look at some of your pictures from the book and maybe it's also easier, to talk about it then if we have something that you already just mentioned from the buses. So I share my screen and hopefully this works. So this is the book Maximum Shadow, Minimal Light. It was published in Edition Lama Huber, a publishing house in Austria. Gustavo, how was that when you were approached by Lois and he proposed to make a book? I couldn't believe it at first because you know, nowadays everyone is paying a lot of money to make their books and something that was a dream for me to have a book published, but it was something that I was planning to do in 10 years when I would gather some money to sell a car to do it. And then Lloyds wrote me, I want to publish a book with your pictures. And I was, wow, is this real? And I was really suspicious in the beginning. And then we were talking and talking. And then we finally, I finally bought the tickets to go to Austria. And then I started Oh, no, no. Now this is going to happen. And then in 2007, I went to Baden, the publisher is, and then I just took 900 pictures with me. And then I sat along with Lloyd and we started looking, we first looked at all 900 pictures and we started by giving them one star. And then in second round, two stars and then three stars and four stars until we got to 95 images with five stars and then okay that's the selection and yeah I was very excited and then but most of decisions were taken by Liza, I have to say, you know. He has a lot of experience. You probably know him so you know what he's like but yeah okay I like what he did because we had many different pictures and but at the same time we have many things that repeat themselves, the reflections things and the colors. So his idea for editing the book was that we should not repeat these things, you know. So one picture is trying to break the expectation in relation to, you know, if you have one very busy picture here, the next one will be a bit calmer. And if you have a reflection, the other one can be a reflection picture. So we're always trying to break this expectation and because it's a very long book, I have never seen it like in just one time, I cannot sit and see nine to five features. So yeah. Yeah. It turned out great. It's a book that you take up over and over again and you always find something new when you look at the picture. So beautifully done. The title, Maximum Shadow, Minimal Light, where does that come from? It comes from a line, from a poem by Brazilian poet Paulo Leminski, and he had this poem in which he said that the final lines of the poem say exactly this, that the maximum shadow sometimes comes from the minimal light. And that's something that I had written down since 2011, 2012, you know, that's something that stayed in my mind. And I tried many years ago, I had tried to make a project about it. Just, you know, I gave this name to a short project, but I never showed it to anyone. I just kept it to myself. And then when Lois asked me for suggestions for a name, this was, you know, the first thing that I wrote down to show him. And when I showed him these lines, this was my first idea, something like this. I just said, OK, that's it. And I didn't even want to see the other ideas. So, that was very quick. Yeah. Yeah, very suitable title. So let's look at some of the images inside the book and maybe you can comment a little bit on the pictures, explain what we see and then also explain a little bit of your technique behind capturing these images. Okay. This is at the bus station, it was 2015, the year that I got totally obsessed with reflections. And kind of this one is a lot of, for me, it tells me a lot about how reflections work. Cause you know, I had to, I still have the contact sheet for this picture. And when I do a workshop, I like to show these two students. Cause I started by just photographing this guy who was taking the breakfast here. And then I realized that when people pass it behind me, the silhouette would be seen on the right side. So I like this relationship between the guy inside the cafe and the silhouette behind him. For example, here, this guy who's walking here is, you know, in my back. And then suddenly his wife or this woman just came back from, I think she was getting some coffee and then she came back. And then, but then at first I couldn't see her face because, you know, my background was brighter than her. So, suddenly this guy passes behind us and then when this guy passes behind us, he just makes this area darker and then that's why we can see her face properly. Because if this guy hadn't passed, this lasted just a millisecond, it was very quick and luckily I pressed the shutter. So, this kind of relationship between what's inside and what's outside and these things that come and disappear very quickly, this got me really obsessed with reflections and that's one of my luckiest ones, I think. And I think I had much more, much quicker reflections back then because nowadays I struggle to get, you know, a proper one with everything working. Yeah, amazing pictures, this inside look into a cafe and then incorporating the reflections and taking the outside in as well in this composition. And I liked how you explained it, that you first were drawn by this man and all the other elements later fell into place and added up and it got more and more complex and slowly you realize what potential there still is in the images, what kind of possibilities might show up And depending on from what directions people walk into the frame and yeah, it's a great shot. Yeah. Alex Webb says something interesting about it. He says that you have to smell the possibility and I think this is the case here. Just, you know, I felt that something could happen, but I wasn't sure at all about how this thing, you know, the woman coming back and then the silhouette behind me. I just had this, you know, this time, you know, I just could smell some possibility, but I could never figure out beforehand what would happen. And that's what's so exciting for me about street photography. Yeah. Yeah, it's a, this is a question I also had for you. I mean, there's a million things that you can point your camera at. You also started with travel photography, with macro photography, portrait photography, all the different genres, but you stuck with street photography. What is it about urban life that is so exciting to you? Well, I think, maybe the fact that I come from a very small town where nothing happened, in which I was a boring teenager, and then when I moved first to London, then to Sao Paulo, then to the place where I went to do university, I just, you know, I'm this small town guy who gets very excited about seeing crowds of people. And so this is one thing that attracts me a lot and I don't know, I like watching people and I like how people relate to the urban spaces and yeah for me I really love that Minogra and Cole that says that you know life is a tier that he doesn't have to pay the ticket for something like this and I really see life in urban in big cities like this like a city that you know I don't have to pay tickets for, I just go out around and watch. And I don't know if it's sunny outside, I really cannot stay home. I don't feel at rest at home, even if I'm tired. So I feel pressure to go out and see things because I'm always feeling that I'm missing something in the world if I'm staying home for too long. So yeah, I think basically that's it. And of course the possibility of making nice images is interesting. And I really love when I, you know, the sun sets and I can finally stop for a beer and, you know, just rest and, you know, it's a way of making my life a bit less boring because I still work seven, eight hours a day as a journalist and so I need to do something just to please myself at the end of the day, even if just for just a couple of hours. To counterbalance and even if you come home with not a keeper it's yeah it's always great to practice go for a walk take in some fresh air and just observe life on the streets otherwise I would just be you know going from home to work or home and I mean yeah. In this image, you stood very close to your characters here, you stood just right by the window. How do you deal with that, with this proximity to your subjects and go unnoticed, so that they don't react in a way that disturbs the composition? Yeah, that's one of the advantages of working with reflections, because at first people okay, what's this guy doing here? But after some time, they just, I think they don't believe that I'm taking their pictures comes out because I'm so close, especially in this case here. Unfortunately, this cafe doesn't exist anymore in this way. So I cannot do this picture, pictures like these at the bus station. But then, I don't know, I don't try to be invisible, because I don't believe in this. If I'm raising the camera to my face, I don't think that people won't notice me. And then I try to, you know, just keep the camera in front of my belly and just lifting the LCD screen to do, you know, a more stolen picture. But now I'm okay with being noticed. And after some time, people, you know, tend to forget about me in most of the cases. In many cases, it's just, okay, this guy is taking pictures there. Let's just leave him be. But then, yeah, of course we have millions and we have many different reactions and many different situations and each one is totally different. Sometimes I want to work a scene and then if I see someone that's disturbed by me I just come and say okay I'm doing street photography and I try to explain what I'm doing so this person who has to be there, he'll be comfortable with me and so there are many different strategies that i use but i'm totally you know i think i developed them over the years. There's a great video on youtube that you filmed with german street photographer samuel in hamburg yeah and i will link to that and and there you can see how how you work and and what's your style and that you don't uh yeah it's exactly what you said that you don't try to go unnoticed that you are very direct and very yeah you are there with your camera taking the pictures and it's very interesting to watch it yeah Germany actually is very difficult to do this I have I do not have any big problems in Germany but people would always come to me oh now it's illegal to take pictures in public spaces and so yeah I struggled a bit in Hamburg and then in Berlin I had two or three people coming to me and speaking in Germany but of course I We don't understand, but I know it's tricky for you guys there. Yeah, exactly. So let's look at another picture. It's a more subtle composition, also harsh shadows, light involved here. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about this image of this businessman? Yeah, again, it's one of the cases in which I could never foresee what was going to happen. I just followed this guy for, I don't know, five, ten steps, because I was actually trying to wait until someone would come from the shadows and to be in the, you know, in the light here. But then this guy came from behind me and just, okay, this guy's a great character. And I was ready to take a picture of someone coming from the left. And then suddenly this guy just straightened his hand to greet someone. And because, of course, the contrast was so intense, we cannot see the guy coming from the left and so, but I could never, if I could direct people, I could never think about something like this, so that's one of the great things about street photography too. And I love how this guy looks timeless, you know, he looks like from the 60s and we don't see many of these people like here in Brazil. Exactly, like, yeah, totally timeless. And this clean composition, this man reaching out with his hand into the void and you, yeah, you don't see or you have so many questions in your head, or this picture raises questions. I think this is, yeah, the secret of a good street photo that it leaves questions and it doesn't answer everything. So you look again and again and start wondering what this situation is like and what came next. Great picture. Yeah, this is at the bus station again and I really like this one because, you know, we have some formulas in street photography and this is one of them. We see, you know, this patch of light and this very, you know, this very punctual light and then we tend to work into some any random person passes in front of the light and okay, we have a picture. But in this case, I think this kind of picture to be successful, you know, you have to have great character, someone that speaks to you and then makes the picture not only a graphic situation, but it takes it to another level. And when I got home and then I saw this woman's face, I could, for me, she was very representative of the people at the bus station there, you know, they're working all day and then they're coming home in the end of the afternoon and she looks so tired and a bit sweaty. So she was for me, you know, a symbol of many different people who I see every day at the bus station, so for me, this is not just a graphic situation, it's more about... It's also, of course, the composition for me works very nicely with all these people here on top and the blue against the orange, but then it's a lot about her expression and how, you know, the drama that she brings to the picture. Yeah, beautiful situation in itself, but yeah, with the right character, that's just the special thing that makes it an outstanding image. And this is one of the pictures you took in your hometown, right? Yeah. From the project. Exactly. So in this, in my hometown, in this neighborhood that I like to work, we have basically three or four streets with this, all houses are very similar to each other. And then the sunset, you know, with no tall building. So we have this great light and when all the situations and with lots of light and shadows, because, of course, these houses on the right are casting shadows to the left. So we always have this beautiful contrast. And people tend to paint their houses with different vibrant colors. So it's easy to photograph there. And it's all about trying to find the right characters and to photograph them under the great light. And it's not very difficult to do this because you have these characters coming into the light and we have some silhouettes. And of course, this car adds a lot. And I really like all this shine here. This is one of my favorites of the series. And yeah, and I don't know, I like this project a lot because for me, it represents a bit of my childhood. Not only my own childhood, because of course, I was I would play on the streets a lot in my own hometown. but then formally, the way that I photograph all these houses which look like. You know, a kid's drawing, you know, the little house that we used to draw at school. So for me, it's a lot about my childhood in photography and my own childhood. Many photographers find it hard to photograph in their own backyard and in their own environment. Did you feel the same in the beginning? Did it take a while to get into the flow to photograph in your hometown? Yes, yes, especially because I know it has 18,000 inhabitants, so and I didn't want to be stopped by people all the time, Oh, Gustavo, how are you doing? Where have you been? I haven't seen you for a while. So I just I decided that I should not photograph in, you know, in downtown where I know most of the people and that's why I went for this neighborhood, which is more close to the farms and because I didn't want to be. And, of course, even in this neighborhood, people still, oh, who are you? Are you son of, I know your father, I know your grandfather. Many times I have this kind of conversation, but what first attracted me to explore this neighborhood was the fact that I wasn't being, that I wouldn't be stopped all the time by people that I know. And then, of course, but when I, and then I started to realize how the potential that it had graphically because of the sunset and because of the colorful houses and the old cars, and it has a lot of character and reminds me of Cuba as well. Yeah, that's it. I started photographing my hometown around 2010 and 2009 when I was really, really obsessed with photography. And when I went to see my parents, I didn't want to stop photographing just because I was seeing my parents on holiday. So I had to photograph anyway. but I never felt this block about, you know, being my own backyard. Yeah, every photographer has its own way into photography and growing and developing a personal vision and there's no recipe for that, how to learn, how to see. You teach workshops and there are some online courses where you give away what you've learned so far on the streets. What is it that you think that you can teach in street photography? And what are some aspects that are impossible to teach and that everybody has to find out on their own? That's a great question. And I still ask myself all the time, what can you teach in street photography? And I think that we can basically, more than teach, I think we can inspire people to see the world with their own eyes. Something like this and by showing your trajectory and how you started and how you develop your style by studying it and by trying different things I think I can actually inspire people more than teaching how to see or how to compose. And of course I talk a lot about composition and I talk a lot about how I work with light and shadows and I think these things, these technical aspects can be taught and how I work with reflections and I go very deep into it and I So, okay, now here I took a step to the right and I took a step to the left so I could make this image come together. And I like to give very detailed explanations when I'm doing workshops and in my online courses, but of course you cannot teach sensitivity or sensibility to the situations that one will find on the streets. So this is something that cannot be taught. And I have my own references, my own influences, and you know each people reacts differently to other photographers or into. Into the reality, I guess. Yeah, I watched your first online course about street photography on Domestika. It's greatly done. It's, yeah, I can really recommend it. It's in Portuguese, but with subtitles in English and in German. So you can also enjoy it if you don't speak Portuguese. And what I also like is you give lots of references that what you mentioned. It's like you can teach someone to see, but you can give references and point out where to look. Yeah, I think references are very important because they basically teach you how to react differently in the situations that you find on the street. And I don't think that any photographer is creating something that's totally new or fresh. And for me, the importance of showing references is that you just start incorporating these images in the back of your mind, and then you see a situation, you don't know exactly where you saw it before, but you kind of know how to frame it, or, you know, just stay in the back of your mind, and you just start mixing them all together. And then you can with something that's more yours, or not totally new, but then, you know, it has your own season in your way of season, or your a bit of your way of seeing. Yeah. Well, thank you very much, Gustavo, for taking us on your journey to become the photographer that you are today. It was very interesting and before we end this interview we have some audience today here in Zoom and yeah I'd like to ask them if they also have some questions, something I forgot to ask, something they want to know. So this is your chance now to ask Gustavo some questions before he has to go. At this point, we will continue for a while with the participants of Abenteuer Reportage Fotografie, our online course for visual storytelling. Gustavo has taken a lot of time for the questions. If you want to be part of it, take a closer look at the project. Abenteuer-reportagefotografie.de, More about Gustavo can be found in his online courses on Domestika. You can find the link in the show notes of this episode. Thank you for listening and see you next time. Your Kai.