In a new blog series we're asking photographers to talk about 3 of their favourite photos, beginning with Brazilian street photographer, Gustavo Minas.

Gustavo Minas: Hi everyone! Today I'm sharing 3 images from my 2nd book, "Liquid Cities", to be published by Eyeshot in August. The book is a compilation of 12 years of photos, somehow related to the concept of liquid modernity by Polish philosopher Zygmunt Bauman. The series was exhibited in Brazil in 2022 and was shortlisted for Leica Oskar Barnack Award in 2023. The book is on pre-sale until June 30th, and will be considered sold out after this.

01. Sunrise on a plane

I always get a little nervous and unquiet when I happen to be on an airplane during sunrise or sunset and a careless fellow passenger leaves his/her window open to let the most beautiful light come in. I always have my camera on my lap, but sometimes raising it to my eye can be a bit awkward. I didn't care about it that day, maybe because it was one of my first trips during the pandemic and I was eager to see things and take photos outside of Brasília, where I live. Besides the beauty of the light on her red hair, the half-dreamy half-suffering expression on the woman's face makes it for me.

02. Raindrops on my Lens

Brasilia has very extreme seasons in terms of weather: the winter is totally dry (and perfect for shooting), and summers are mostly wet. That's the part of the year when I care a little less about going out every day to photograph. On that summer day, I was riding my bike when a storm came. I took shelter under a bus stop, and I had my camera in my bag. The rain lasted for a long time, but all the action around the bus stop was enough to keep me entertained. I tried some shots with a little flash on my camera, which was probably more wet than it should be, but still working. I got so immersed in the flux of umbrellas and in the process that I didn't realize that I had rain drops on my lens, and that's what made this picture. I love when people wonder how a certain picture happened, for me it means that I managed to take a mundane situation to another level. And that's often the case with this picture, with the ghostly presence of the man in this raincoat.

03. A Lost Highway Vibe

I'm not the kind of photographer who knows exactly what I'm getting when I press the shutter. Sometimes it's just some intuition that's guiding me, and sometimes it's just a desire to experiment, especially when I'm bored. I'm also not a very good driver (or at least that's what people think of me), so my partner Priscila usually drives when we're on the road. And most of the time I get bored by just sitting on the passenger's seat, so I travel experimenting this and that with my camera. That day I was playing with an off-camera flash, mixing it with slow shutter speed. To this day I still can't realize how I managed to get both the road and Priscila's face right, and I could never repeat this effect, which makes this image special for me. I also like its David Lynch's Lost Higway vibe.

Thanks for reading! We hope you enjoy this series. Gustavo's book, 'Liquid Cities' is available here.

You can also see Gustavo's work in Issue 07 of Framelines Magazine