In
2012, he won BesPhoto and what goes
on inside Mafalala was revealed to the world. Through his lens, Mauro Pinto
showed other experiences of the neighbourhood that was once home to Eusébio,
José Craveirinha, Fany Mpfumo and Samora Machel, among other great names born
in Mozambique. His photos, of anonymous people, put you in the place of another,
where sometimes you tremble with the power of the image. With his collection – Dá Licença – you are whisked off to the
country at its truest, with all its ethnic groups and languages, where its Mozambicanicity is at its clearest.
Mauro Pinto asked for permission, before entering houses and capturing images,
which are immortalised in time, in what is his most valued work, where to add the
slightest word would be too much.
Inspired
by legendary photographer Ricardo Rangel, with whom he learned how to make
photography human, since 2004 Mauro has a project that he has called Restos do Mundo (Remains of the World), which are people who wander, through their
madness, through the streets of the city of Maputo and that no one sees.
Abandoned by their families and friends, they live on the fringes of what is
acceptable. To achieve these shocking images, Mauro had to head down into the
underworld, where nobody wants to go and to negotiate, sometimes in exchange for
food, other times just sitting and talking. With this collection of invisible
people, Mauro Pinto has managed to capture what the faces do not say. Each of
them in their own way proclaiming that they had not given up on stopping time.
The photographer has just wound up their souls a little. Maybe one day the
collection will be finished.
The
photographer, who reads José Saramago, because he likes the way the Nobel Laureate
dismantles Portuguese, sees photography not as a technique, but rather as an
image that captures the essence that is almost impossible to detect. He began
his professional career in 2000, after studying photography at the Monitor
International School in Johannesburg, and his work has already been exhibited
on almost every continent. Recently his work could be seen in Macau, as part of
the Alter Ego project, before heading
to the largest photography exhibition and fair in the world, Paris Photo. Mauro Pinto, who has a
permanent exhibition at Galeria 111, in Portugal, always photographs ‘in
analogue’ to obtain magical and authentic shades from the light, where the
image captured does not have the texture of fiction.
Mauro Pinto asked for permission, before entering houses and capturing images, which are immortalised in time.
