Fake it until you make it…

…or the things we deny so we can make what`s expected from us. That was the main theme of a conversation I had with my cousin Elisa a few weeks ago. We were discussing my attempt to shift creativity (a VERY rare resource within these lands…) towards more pleasing subjects. The constrains attached to commercial photography made Elisa very good at it. She is capable of creating and exercising her expression on top of the demands of the “jobs” she gets.

As one could expect, my path through photography is a bit different. As Natalia, a good friend of mine once said: “one can only give what one has to give”. Well, that being the case, the only thing I have to give are a bunch of feelings, and most of them are not beautiful. – Well, then, Elisa said, do not expect people to “upvote” your pictures if what they see is not pleasing to them. She was, again, right.

The absence of recognition however can be bitter to the tongue. In the other hand, creating something just for recognition ends up in an egoloop that feeds me stuff I like, but do not need.

Honestly, I took some time to make up my mind about this. Since I made Hiding Aces and Domination I`ve been stuck in this matter. I made them both in the same night and got a lot of recognition from the former and almost none from the latter. The bad thing is: Domination was almost an open window to my soul. As I already mentioned, Domination has things I feel covered and expressed by things that made me who I am. Hiding Aces was crafted to be liked. The picture meant nothing to me. I`m sure, however, that a card of hearts hanging in a bottle lighted by warm and cozy light was DESTINED for success. Go figure it…

Once I stopped caring about the “likes” I would get for my work, I started sending probes to see what kind of feeling I could bring back. Just like the old man from Hemmingway`s The Old Man and The Sea, something way bigger than expected came to surface. “You wanted something, here you go, have a blast!”. Some strong feelings of hopelessness came up and the images I would like to capture started coming to me.

Thankfully, my wife Álica and my very good friend Marcela Nardeli came to the rescue. Some conversation about the main theme came up during the shooting and they tried (and they made it!) to represent it the best way they could without suffocating trough the Russian WWII gas mask I borrowed from my friend Ricardo Roriz. With no more “trying to understand”, I`d like to present you the result of this effort:

Remember