During a happy hour in São Paulo I was introduced to Luis Salvatore. Despite my limited Portuguese and a band playing loud music a couple of stalls down the hall I understood quickly that he was a photographer and had founded an NGO to help Brazil's less fortunate. My curiosity was aroused.
A moving book of photography about Brazilian life
Moving away from the noise, we stood in a quiet corner where I was soon engaged in the life story of a man who is passionate about his country and countrymen – somebody who understood at a young age that he could do something for those whose lives are less fortunate than his.
He had just presented a friend with his recently published book of photography, Caminhos de um Brasil Solidário – Pathways of a Solidary Brazil, and handed a copy to me to check out. For him, it was time to socialise; for me, however, happy hour was over. I sat in a quiet corner and started reading. By the time the happy hour was over I had finished the book and was deeply moved by the photographs and personal texts that accompanied the images.
Photographer Luis Salvatore and his NGO project
When admiring Luis Salvatore's photographs, it is hard to believe that he is in fact a qualified lawyer and never took any photography courses. He has a natural talent for photography which, as he claims himself, he inherited from his grandfather. His photographs have been published in exhibitions, in his first book of photography O Brasil na Visão do Brasileiro [Brazil Viewed by Brazilians], as well as in more than one hundred publications.
It was during his travels that he was confronted with the poignant disparity in wealth in Brazil. Instead of moaning about it, he decided to take action. He explains this turning point in the introduction to Pathways of a Solidary Brazil, "I say that it was when I happened to come across values that, until then, were unknown to me, but which, as in a large mirror, I was able to feel and see."
Together with his sister Ana Salvatore, he founded the Instituto Brasil Solidário, an NGO that, as Luis says, "Works on the transformation of reality of the country through the work of education and sustainability."
What makes Luis' Salvatore's photographs unique?
After talking with Luis and reading Caminhos de um Brasil Solidário I can only conclude I have met an extraordinary man who is not afraid to show his emotions and sentiments – which is quite unusual in a country where male characters are more easily defined as macho than as sentimentalist.
Somehow this sentiment is embedded in his images, maybe because, as he explains in his book, he sees himself mirrored in others – the reflection of himself in people he meets during his travels and subsequently photographs.
Luis Salvatore could easily have grown too big for his boots, what with the success that he is having at the age of thirty-five with the foundation and management of his communication agency "Trilha Brasil", with the foundation and management of IBS that has grown from a small-scale project into a large foundation helping hundreds of schools and communities, and as a photographer. However, despite all these successes he has remained a humble man.
What makes a good photograph?
Anecdotes from Pathways of a Solidary Brazil give insight into Luis Salvatore's character and work. He explains how photography to him is neither about social criticism nor about showing suffering people, or shocking people with images of injustice. To Luis, photography means keeping an open mind and searching for something new to make a statement.
One of the strong examples in his book is the page showing a coal miner smoking a cigarette: face smeared with soot, black hands, baseball cap moved sideways and ash almost falling off his cigarette. No images of misery, dirt, unhealthy living conditions; just a smoking coal miner.
To Luis, photography is all about his determination to look at things that don’t usually draw our attention. According to him it's not about having the best camera or the right weather conditions, but about the way a photographer sees things. "It's that simple," he concludes in his book of photography Caminhos de um Brasil Solidário.
Karin-Marijke Vis - Karin-Marijke Vis is a bilingual writer (Dutch-English) who has been traveling in Asia and South America since 2003.
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