The Beautiful Banality of It

Photographs by Mário Macedo
Interview via email, May 2015

What brought you to photography, what is it that makes you want to shoot?

I started photographing on a regular basis when I got my first analogue camera and soon it became like a vice, this conscious way of making a visual diary of my life. I don’t enjoy having pre-conceived ideas of what to shoot, I like the unmediated subject, the one that just appears in front of me in form of a landscape, a stranger or simply my friends just having fun and being weirdos. I like to capture special moments of my life, the chaos and harmony that surrounds it and, most of all, the beautiful banality of it.

You seem to bring your camera everywhere, how has that changed the way you interact with the world?

Since I use mostly point and shoot cameras now it’s pretty easy to carry it everywhere. It hasn’t changed much my way of interacting with the world. I just enjoy to freeze moments and it’s a challenge for me to walk the street and photograph strangers. Of course that you become more aware of your surroundings when you have your camera with you and that’s the most important. Just realising what’s around you and what could make a great photo. It all happens really fast but when I feel the need to take a certain photo, it’s something so strong inside me, that if I do not obey myself and do it, I will feel somehow bad for the next days.

What are the things you look for when you are making photographs?
 

I look for special moments that come to me, the unmediated ones. I realize, with time, that i photograph a lot of the same stuff over and over but for me it’s always nice to take a walk or travel around because I never know what is going to catch my eye. That’s why photography makes me less bored with daily life. I guess there are this small amount of things that fascinate me into photographing them. I like to document my friendships, my relations, certain landscapes that seem touched by a certain ‘god', no matter how trashy they might look. Lots of animals and, more recently, kids. Don’t know why, yet, but I think kids and animals are the only right ones in this world.