Nuno Serrão - Portrait & Landscape Photographer
The work of Nuno Serrão possesses such depth and clarity — it pulls you in and holds you. It was a pleasure to chat to Nuno about his process & dive deep into his philosophy behind photography & shooting analogue.
How would you define your work?
Art, like time, is an experience correlated to the observer’s point of view. Any definition I could give you would be distorted because, like the photon that cannot experience time, I have never been anyone else. I have never seen my work for the first time.
How do you convey emotion in your images?
I don't think about it that way. It's hard enough for me to handle them as it is. For many years, I bounded emotions with logic, and now I let them loose within the edges of the film. What happens after that is between you and the photograph.
Your work feels so natural but also clean and considered. How do you achieve this?
If indeed life is a way for the universe to contemplate itself, I believe photography, from all the arts, is the most realistic expression of this desire.
What you capture in a photograph is more than what’s in front of you. It's how you see it.
In the same way, one is not strange because he looks different, and the ones who are, try to look as normal as possible. A photograph isn't experimental just because the subject is unperceivable. For me, photography is for films, what poetry is for books. I don't need to invent new words. The language is already here, and my objective is to find the simplest way to express all the complexity.
How do you know when you’ve taken a good photo?
I can feel it deep inside my gut. It packs the same punch as when I have an idea or listen to a beautiful melody for the first time. You just know that something in you has changed forever. I want to create a photograph that packs a punch so strong I forget to breathe.
What is your current go to techniques and technology?
After a two-year hiatus from the internet a few years ago, I decided I needed a change and started to work with analogue. By then, I had grown tired of the immediatism of social media and how it was making my work derivative. This decision seemed contradictory, given that it was my digital work that led me to be published and reach brands such as Adobe and Samsung, but I didn’t care. My best work is slow, thought out, and meditative. It results from an inner process, not from any external pressure. Shooting in analogue medium format, a naturally slower process, suits me better, and there is something magical about knowing that the photons of light that are captured on film remain there forever.
What was your favourite moment whilst shooting in the last year?
The drives, waiting for the right light, the right moment. The risks I took. The mistakes I made. The thoughts I had. People I’ve met. Next year, I hope to travel more, wander more, take more risks, meet more people, and have many more of these moments.
How do you balance creating art for yourself versus art for clients?
I don’t. I explore, experiment and grow with my projects, applying what I’ve learned to my commercial work, and then I start again. The success of this symbiosis allows me to keep these cycles going, but the perfect balance is never achieved. I don’t think such a thing can exist beyond the realm of theory, nor does the universe, or we wouldn't have one.
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