JOÃO PEDRO LIMA
All Rights Reserved ©João Pedro Lima
João Pedro Lima is a photographer from São Bernardo do Campo, an industrial town in the greater São Paulo area in Brazil. His latest photo book “Derradeiro” (Last-Ditch) is being published by his own label, Selo Turvo. João took us trough this project of images engulfed in a mysterious fog that leaves us wondering if we are lost in the mist of the nearby Atlantic Forest or in the fumes of the encroaching factories.
DERRADEIRO
How would you describe this project?
JPL: Derradeiro is a project born from a dream I had in which my wife mysteriously disappears. The book is a chase for these traces where I excessively wander by roadsides looking for these fragments. Time-lapse, memories in ruins. These roads are full of mosquitoes, sour smells and coughing people. Industry took over the last remains of bucolism that existed there. It is an exhaustive trip, off-beat steps that lead nowhere. In the book I somehow try to explore this dream to its full extent so it can be erased from me and I don’t have to take notes from the ones that will come next.
“Derradeiro is a project born from a dream I had in which my wife mysteriously disappears”
Tell us more about how this dream influenced your creative process.
JPL: It was like any other night when you sleep deeply and your body wakes up tired, but this specific day was different. I woke up with fragments of a strange dream where Alix (João’s wife) had disappeared from my mind for a few seconds, even if she was by my side when I woke up. That feeling stuck with me and I couldn’t forget it for days. At that moment I thought of writing about that search but I couldn’t find the words. I resorted to the idea of photographing what would have happened in that fragment of a dream. The project started gaining life this way. I spent almost two years photographing the industrial areas of the city, more specifically the small residential areas around the plants. I live in a mountainous area close to the coast so I visited places where I could see slices of a rough sea in the distance to calm my mind a little. When I noticed I already had several printed images from this project hanging on the wall I decided to start editing with Alix. We chose the images together and she sequenced it. It is funny that transforming this project into something physical like a book took a great weight from my shoulders. My headaches are not so frequent anymore.
The images in “Derradeiro” seem to be influenced by japanese photography, specifically by the group around Provoke magazine. An important characteristic of this group is the acceptance of the accident, the uncontrollable, the evanescent. How do those themes manifest in your own practice?
JPL: Working with broken images is the way I found to manifest the memories erased by a reality that is not attuned to our inner lives in order to forge a genuine existence. The derelict image is in itself a form of accident that, in many occasions, are purposefully pursued by the author to bleed the body that inhabits the photograph. I try to pursue that in my work as well, photographing with what I have in my hands and not worrying about camera settings. I find myself seeking to erase my photographer self.
You were born, raised, and still live in São Bernardo do Campo. The local landscape in the limit between industry and nature is a recurring theme in your project. I would like you to tell us a bit more about your relationship with your hometown.
JPL: The relationship with the city I live in is very present in my photography. We are going through a post-industrial period. Traditional neighborhoods, the center square, punk culture, memory is dying here. The workers already surrendered themselves to instantaneous deaths, forgetting they would die anyway from the toxic fumes of the automaker plants. This made me think I had no reason to go photograph in the capital (São Paulo) since it is here that everything is being sucked in. This way I create a real strong connection with this piece of land that, like it or not, is my home.
“We are going through a post-industrial period. Traditional neighborhoods, the center square, punk culture, memory is dying here”
You mentioned the fact that the events of 2020 are changing the profile of the street photography that you see online and maybe that has influenced your own work. What are these changes and how have you reacted to all that?
JPL: Photography is something that is always changing, like any of the arts, but at this moment I see that street photographers are dealing with the situation in a very different way. In the beginning (of the pandemic) most people stopped going out in the street since it was impossible considering the severity of the global situation we were living in. That changed over time. Folks are more interested in slower investigative processes that are not solely relying on snapshots and starting to question “why?”. The focus is not on the people anymore but on the environment as a whole, giving interest to objects, situations, the passage of time these spaces convey. A certain introspection of the street. In my case I am photographing a lot less but I am more interested in the processes that I can go through and/or carry out to achieve the image.
What are the specific challenges of being an analog photographer in a Country like Brazil?
JPL: Like everything else in Brazil, the bill is doubled. Like it or not we are still colonized. The exploitation of our motherland by the great imperialist powers and the vertigo of Capitalism is around every corner. This is reflected in everything we do around here, be it in the arts or the daily life of each one of us. Working with film stock is expensive and just for a few. Photography is elitist in itself and the analog niche is much smaller still. We have to constantly figure out how to develop, digitize, print or any other kinds of processes. Because of that people help each other a lot and that in itself keeps the scene moving along, but it’s not a walk in the park. It is a daily struggle.
The book will be released by your own independent label, Selo Turvo. How did you start it and what projects have you already developed?
JPL: Yes, the book will be published by Selo Turvo. The project was born at the onset of the pandemic while I was working on my first publication, “Living Ghosts”. At that time me and Alix Breda were finishing editing and sequencing that book, about to start on the final design, while I was searching for some publishing houses interested in releasing the material. I noticed many publishers did not converse with my proposal and I felt adrift, so I decided to self-publish. At the last minute when I was at the press doing print tests, Alix came to me with the idea of creating a label to publish our own work. And that’s how Selo Turvo appeared, from the margins and the desire to bring our shelved mistakes to the world, in favor of distortion. Since then, in seven months we produced four books, one of them a collective. Currently the label is a six-handed operation: Alix Breda, Vitor Casemiro and myself, of course.
“I noticed many publishers did not converse with my proposal and I felt adrift, so I decided to self-publish”
What are the future plans for Selo Turvo and for your own work?
JPL: We will start the year off in February with the publication of my own book. After that we have plans to publish at least three or four other books this year, two of them already in the works. I like the rhythm of it, always in movement, searching for new narratives, acknowledging some failed experiments we leave unused, like the blur in our vision when we wake up from deep sleep.
For my own photography work I have uncertain plans. I like to work in many directions. I have a more-or-less shelved project called “No fim a desordem cortou meu cordão umbilical” (In the end disorder cut my umbilical cord) that I think I will publish by the end of this decade. Besides that I am giving importance to what keeps me sane during these chaotic times of extreme oppression we are living in. I live to see things getting back to normal, people getting back to living the way they should. I have more love for the people who wish me well, I am giving importance to the small things. This way I can reflect about the things I create, or I will go crazy.
All Rights Reserved ©João Pedro Lima