She signs everything she does with her soul, and questions herself even – after all she is a scientist. On one side she has the inheritance of her father, who’d picture her, alone or with her brothers, as naturally as possible, on the other she has her mother, who’d doll them up on the set dates in which they were to visit the photograph, with a set scenery and flashes shaped like umbrellas.
Sara Reis Gomes is the author of many recent photos of babies and their families that we see in the social networks, but she never imagined, three years ago, that she’d so passionately grab what had been dormant since her childhood.
Marine biologist, married, mother of four, she decided, during a brief spell in a hospital, to organize the pictures of the four, one of them just one year old. She owes to that coup of life the discovery of the passion she has for photography, when in the Nini Design Centre she recalls the first steps of this second coming of the images one puts away.
Sitting by the bar where the tourists of two boats arrive, she looks to the sun through the glass. She is trained as a scientist and has the soul of a mother. The mother who wanted to keep just the best moments – and not all, because one doesn’t need a hundred pictures of a bay’s first year to later remember how he was. After all, her mother just took them to the photographer with one, six and twelve months. But her father was there, to picture her when the dresses weren’t pressed, and the hair tidily combed and tied in ribbons.
But there is something she misses, now that she has started working on Christmas cards ordered by her faithful clients: the simplicity of the accoutrements in the shiny 10x15cm sheets given to grandparents, uncles and godparents.
Today, she stresses, there are so many decorations on the pictures that people get distracted from the main element, the pictured person. And it is against this that she has been fighting in the workshops she develops, and which have been consistently packed. But she is already preparing the ones for next year, one of which to take place at the Nini Design Centre, adding that there will be room for all – “even if I have to create more openings”, she says, smiling.
I look to the mother of four kids, aged between 3 and 14, and I wonder if her day won’t have more hours than all others. Especially when one of them suffers from dyslexia, a disorder that made her start the “Would you mum” blog, that is reinventing itself at this point. She spoke of the student, the son, the child who, instead of reading, would join up the letters, and would thus take longer than the others. And of her decision to take him to Lisbon, looking elsewhere for answers. Including the internet. Her scientist side led her to always question. It took her to study the brain more than many other mothers, and to always explain to her eldest what was going on with him. She didn’t hide the disorder. But she soon found that she was having a monologue, rather than a dialogue. People hid the disorder from their kids. They refused to face it. Sara got very close to neurodevelopment, it became one more resident of the house. They got used to it every day, and the youngest grew up with a brother that required some extra attention. Like all kids do.
She neglected the blog with the same speed in which she picked up photography. She managed to keep them both for some time, but eventually the passion for the “click” and the great moment in which the photo is transformed spoke louder.
Today we speak of the mother who has, since 2002, kept images that her kids will one day see, with no photographer’s poses or combed hairs or ribbons.
She is not afraid to discard the accessory, sticking to what’s important, and has taught just that to many mothers cycling through her workshops, especially enjoying sharing smiles, expressions and emotions that generate smiles. And that why she is so passionate about the children she sees growing through her lenses, the children she attracts to her arms when she wants to capture some of their mischief or chewing on their mother’s chin, in a gentle and unique gesture that she steals into her camera.
It is difficult to remain indifferent to her work. So much so that her style is already recognizable, when someone publishes pictures of a baby’s evolution through its first year, a work that sometimes startrs even before it has wore its first clothes. Yellow or any other colour. Even if the picture, the one everybody talks about, is black and white. It all depends on what one wants to convey. Some pictures are better like this, others require colour to give them life. It is the moment, but above all the emotion that dictate what becomes of the millions of bytes she keeps in her computer and is delivered to the increasing number of clients that seek her services. Like the clients that enter the place where Madeiran designer Nini keeps her creations. These quite a bit heavier than an image, but that also generate a lot of emotions, judging by the tourists that surround us, camera poised and smart phones pointed. I even fear that this will distract my guest, and that she will start giving hints to the amateurs all around us.
Let us go back to time. Of her capacity to organize day to day grind with four children and her work as a biologist. She smiles when she says that after a certain hour, at home, one stops hearing the word mom to start hearing dad. And then, in a softer tone, she seems to confess that her kids’ grades dropped when she started this adventure, but the tone then changes to justify the inevitable: they would eventually have to start studying on their own. She thus delegated responsibilities earlier, even though she counts on the unconditional support of her husband.
I see two women in a single body. Like they are parts of one of those pieces surrounding us designed by Nini. One methodical and inquisitive, always trying to find the whys, by profession, the other one relaxed, that lets her kids scratch and grow with scars, because it’s all a part of growing. If there’s a camera close, good. If not, it doesn’t matter. There will always be another moment. And it’s difficult to fathom where one starts and the other ends, because the relaxed one is a perfectionist, and likes to add technical touches to mini models that aren’t always in the best position for the clothing catalogue.
I thought I should avoid the question, because the answer would be obvious, but it was stronger than me. I wanted to know whether she had taken “the” picture, if that moment, the one that touched her, has already happened. The denial was faster than the shutter of a camera.
She says that what she enjoys is photographing children, landscapes aren’t for her lenses. She likes to picture families, but she doesn’t go as far as those printed in sepia that include a dog on the master’s feet and the patriarch sitting with all others standing around him. The technical explanation for black and white photographs is in the fact that it concentrates on people’s expressions, not on the red skirt or the patterned jacket.
In the post-production she does at home, instinctively, she chooses the result when the photograph survives the triage that discards all the others. She knows whether it will be colours or no colours. And she repeats: “I use instinct a lot”. Even the though the explanation she givesme, later, is by the “other” woman living inside her, that says that “because of my son’s dyslexia I read a lot on neurobiology and I got a better notion of how our brain works. Her biologist side says that visual information is more quickly read than verbal”. And that part, she admits, is more important than photographer techniques. But what’s really good is “when you can get it all”.
Summing up, “the spontaneity of the moment and the clinical eye that discovers what the look of the portrayed person wants to convey is a lot more interesting than a technically perfect picture, without soul, and that leaves us indifferent. And the people who increasingly seek her out, to remember those small moments that only a photographer with emotions can capture, know that.
This is one awesome blog.Thanks Again. Awesome.