The Mules

From morning to night, the workers of the Port of Tabatinga bustle about loading and unloading cargo. They are obliged to walk many kilometers through the muck while carrying remarkable loads. I took a series of images of these workers but was disappointed with the results. In my opinion, my photos, composed with too much care, do not in my view inspire much awe or curiosity.

I decided to reframe my images by closing my eyes and using the “crop” tool in the Photoshop program. The fact that I couldn’t see allowed me to create compositions that would otherwise have been impossible for me to imagine. This exercise demonstrated to me how much my compositions have been insidiously and unconsciously shaped by the photographic techniques used in advertising, the media and in cinema.