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Categories / Human Interest /Tags / Brazil / conceptual photography / Family / Germany / hotels / human interest / Click here to open comments section, click again when done to close / Comments Off

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camomile, malva, macela and lemongras Every morning vó Maria prepares the tea which, as she repeatedly emphasizes, is good for almost everything; it cures and prevents practically all known health problems. “Granddad says”, she proudly relates, “that if it wasnt for this tea he would be already dead!” And every time someone mentions the tea in the house, she starts: “Its made of macela, artichoke, camomile, guaco, horsetail, malva (botanical name for mallow) sage, lemongrass and many other herbs!” She makes sure vô Cirillo drinks his mug of it as soon as he gets up (and if Im not wrong before he goes to bed as well), then she fills two plastic bottles with it and asks someone to take them to my uncles house (which is next door). The rest of it is left somewhere in the kitchen, so that whoever is visiting them can also have the benefits of her tea.

Camomile, malva, macela and lemongrass looks at the everyday life of my grandparents (their house, their objects, their activities) who live in a very small town in the south of Brazil, where I grew up. The project is very much about myself as well, as their house is the first place I remember being in and it is where I spent most of my childhood. It is also the only place where little has changed, where everything is more or less the same since I was a child. The objects I have always seen but never really noticed; the rituals I have repeatedly experienced but never thought of their true importance; the routine I have participated but not fully realized its meanings and consequences: all these started to make more sense to me as I moved from the city where they live. The project is about understanding values, traditions and culture through the people and the place which I see as my base. It is about going back, of getting to know where I come from.

hotel They have left that space and returned their keys. The room is empty. The pinhole camera can now be placed there. A very long exposure is necessary but there is not much time: the room has to be cleaned and made ready for someone else. hotel captures the moment between the stay of one guest and another in hotel rooms, a transitory moment in a transitory, yet private space. In a few minutes, the sheets will be changed, the beds will be remade and the traces left by those who were there will be removed. Other guests are to occupy those rooms, another atmosphere is to be formed, another story is to be lived. We are left only with the wonder, of what that story was and what the next one will be.