Courage

Courage is my fantasy about the everyday gaze of a child who exists.

The crossing I’ve endured through all these years pulled me out of a whirlwind, emptied me, and placed me in a space of intense feelings.

A portrait that looks into the lens, that looks at you.

And that can trigger emotions.

During this time I let a boy place a bird on my arm in New York, saw another boy run from the police in Rio de Janeiro, another save me from horses in Bahia, a boy studying in a bombed school in South Africa, another boy confront me with a gun at the corner of my street… and all these boys had something in common: courage.

And when I point my camera at these boys, I see myself in the mirror. Because as Jorge Aragão once sang: “malandro, I know you don’t realize the fact of being a capoeirista, a brown-skinned boy, lost in the world, dying of love.”

On this journey of interest in the other, I understood that a lost boy is a deep abyss, and without society’s recognition, what remains is courage.

Many absences—including the absence of fear.

Look, I began this series searching for belonging, and since I found none, I began to belong to myself.

These photos are a painful draft of me—and perhaps, of you.

Axé.