I’m a self-taught Brazilian photographer. I’m more a kind of an “On-The-Road” photographer than any thing else.
Photography, artistically speaking, expresses itself to me as a way of seeing the world, of showing myself to the world with all my virtues and defects; to express not only all my dreams, but also my mishaps, my mistakes, insecurities and nightmares. A way to rescue and reconstruct my past. The things I did and the things I couldn’t do. In photography I wanted to express my concerns in the world talking about dreams and nightmares; of mysteries and tensions; of abstractionism and surrealism and, of that existing duality between the real and the imaginary that permeates our existence; of illusions, delusions and contradictions; express myself about mortality, about doubts and desires. As Duane Michals said once: “Photographs should be provocative and not tell you what you already know”. He also says that the magic is in seeing everything in new ways.
I have a feeling that photography needs to be less factual and more personal and subjective. More impressionistic. You must create and record impressions that express more emotions, feelings and spirit. It should express much more how the author feels the world and less how the world and things truly are.
“In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.”
(Alfred Stieglitz)
I’ve been a photographer since I was young. At age 15-16 I bought a small used analog camera. An Olympus Trip. After that, I had two other analogues, one Pentax K1000 and one Minolta STR100X. Years later I switched to digital. I had several small point and shoot. And more recently I habe been working with three more modern cameras, a Nikon D500 and some lenses, a Fujifilm X100T and Panasonic Lumix LX100II. I’m very happy with these cameras. Very recently I returned to film photography by retrieving 2-3 old analog cameras and scanning new and old negatives. I believe that film photography will live well with digital.
I photographed over 50 years of everything, always as an amateur. I photographed a lot of nature. Landscapes, flora and fauna.
I was a professor and researcher at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar) for about 45 years in the area of Environmental Chemistry. As my retirement rapidly approached, I decided to practice again and to study photography with greater strength and focus. My biggest interest in photography in these past 6-8 years is in street photography. And, in this genre, I have a greater interest in portraits, everyday street scenes and architecture.
I see photography as a great form of artistic expression. I am more interested in the poetic side of photography than in the photojournalistic side.
Adapting a phrase from the great Brazilian poet Ferreira Gullar who said that “art exists because life is not enough“, I would say that for me “photography exists because life is not enough“.
Antonio Mozeto 