The Voice Within - Ricardo Reis

When the world was changing Ricardo Reis was still hanging with his camera. The emotional driven of the shooting was like electric motion. Ricardo has an international repertory and with that became the opportunity to feel several different energies, from cities, moments and people...

But the sense of “taken for granted” this emotional drive, stopped along with the pandemic state, in his hometown, in Portugal. March 2020 the word change for everyone, Ricardo included. Was like earth stop spinning, to only gravitate with no sense.And with that, after more than one decade he lays down the camera.

From the unknown, fear and the necessity of not letting inspiration apart became part of the fighting. In a vortex of things canceled, delayed and postponed not get inspired was not an option.

Days became weeks and projects that were in a sketch started to arise. Inspiration now was driven by non-sense feeling; the sense of not to be. The weeks became harder to overcome and the ability to stay with high levels of energy a Dante’s task…

A lay down camera. A primitive need to get to shoot! Of he went, to visit a ghost city.

The remembrance of being invaded with a million of feelings was overwhelming.

He could hear the tears in his mind, at an empty square, and he felt with eyes wide open all the empty places, full of silence...he smiled, shy and all the places were his own.

The shooting happened. Again and again. Only in one direction.

One day he climbed to Serra da Estrela, in Portugal, to rejoin with nature and make peace with empty landscapes once again.

The feeling of freedom began with the train journey, there, with the locomotive motion he found breathtaking scenarios that make him inhale inspiration after long time.

He looked the mountain horizon, heard the waterfalls and was the mojo...

Closed windows were now shape of freedom, from empty park benches to cold landscapes he found magic; of being free again even if it last just for a frame.

The inspiration of those who create art happens in a moment, for Ricardo it happened in a mixture of dazzling emptiness and the anger of absence.

Although Ricardo searches for places full of everything and everyone, he tries to photograph the emotion beyond obvious, in this pandemic world, nothing was more obvious than the emptiness. He reverted that in his favor, images without body shapes and without movements but still full of soul.

Between the need to believe that the world could not be like this and the need to show his vision of 2020, arises a very intimate, serene and introspective work, in black and white and with strong contrast, as if he already know that the world is about to spin again

Please visit the page of Ricardo Reis to see more of his available work.

Foto’s: Online Gallery (GoFlo)