Sávio Freire and Irmina Walczak
This month we are featuring the working of Sávio Freire and Irmina Walczak. It was wonderful to see a submission from photographers that I have seen presented on other photography platforms and who I admire. I will always be intrigued by and amazed at raw images that depict ordinary life. Through light, choice of focus, composition and others' eyes we can always find new perspectives to view. Be sure to follow the links below to view more work.
@irminawalczak
Bio
(Irmina) I was born in 1981. I began photography during my teenage years. I was self-taught and I was fascinated by the photo enlargement process. At 16 received an award from the main polish newspaper for documenting the travel of pope John Paul II to Poland. I considered following my studies in visual arts but my parents convinced me it was not a good choice. I come from a worker background from a province where idea about a stable career is very strong. I chose linguistic and translation studies. As I was applicable and curious student, I received a Master's degree in Latin America Cultural Studies and entered academic career.
In 2011 I received my PhD in Social Sciences - Anthropology at the University of Brasilia and in the same year I became a mother. It was a mark of my rapprochement to photography. I decided to take my artistic path back inspired by my motherhood experience.
(Sávio) I am Brazilian born in 1982. My story with photography is similar and totally opposite at the same time. I started photographing at 21, but I was always watchful observer. I came from a military family where being sensitive is not welcome, and it is a kind of perversity that I became acquainted with art in France where we moved because of my father military mission. I studied finance and management, but I practiced them for a short time. I was working in a social project at the University of Brasilia when I met Irmina.
Our real involvement with photography started together and was seriously impulse by Yasmin's birth. She turned our inspiration and while shooting her daily life we, simultaneously, were developing reflections concerning memory, social use of family photography and power of family experiences. She was growing up and we were learning which kind of childhood we want to offer to her. Our perception about it was changing and reflecting on our photography. In 2015 our son was born, Kajetan, and one year later we published our first book “Retratos pra Yayá”, (Portraits for Yaya). It was our tribute to free childhood; free from technology, television and consumption. In the same year, one of our photos was a finalist in the LensCulture Portraits Award. Irmina gave up her research position at the university and we started our promotional tour through Brazil. After 6 months of travel, many enriching meetings on festivals and on book assignments, we opted for continuing our study about family photography in Europe. We arrived to Poland but soon we were presenting our book at the Paris Photo and speaking for an audience in Portugal. Last year was marked by a birth of our third child, Elinor, and receiving the Head On Photo Award and a start of our life on the road. Since December, we are travelling in a motorhome, searching to combine our photography work, Yasmin’s homeschooling tasks and cares of a newborn baby. It is as much challenging as inspiring.
Statement
We are a couple of photographers and our main project is to document our family life. We focus on our relationships in intimacy, on our daily life made of common things, or better, of common beings once we are interested in connections between us, relations with our bodies, interactions with a nature, with a world. In our work we search for emotions, moods and feelings. We do not care of activities. So when we are shooting our older daughter ironing clothes for a baby Irmina is waiting for, we are not photographing the ironing itself but her anxious expecting for a new brother or sister, her feeling of becoming the oldest child, the one who cares and who is followed. It is also the portrait of our complicity and of her conscious access to ancestral female lineage of our family.
Everyday life is complex and colorful as kaleidoscope. We try to find poetry in each moment, apparently beautiful and ugly too and portray all of them with naturalness and simplicity.
(Irmina) When my daughter was born, 8 years ago, I had only one wish for her – to be free in her life. However, I rapidly understood that kids are operating with examples so to make her looking for freedom I must make my movement in direction to my freedom first. Turn back into photography I had abandoned in the past was the first step. And as I was in this new context of my life, it, naturally, turned an object of my first photography research.
In the beginning, it was Yasmin and her innocent exploration of the world our main subject. We delved into her childhood. Gradually, we insert ourselves into the images. We were assuming our parenting and becoming aware of what a family is - one body where everything is connected. Our work gained a new dimension – exploration of the complexity of parenting. And as it is always done in partnership, it is a mixture of female and male perspective, made of partnership and complicity.
Besides this long-lasting project that is alive and mutable, we also work with other families in different projects: families of people in coma, families that prioritize autonomy and independence within modern society and its institutions among others. Create portraits of diverse modern families, extending this concept, leading it into limits, is one of our goals as artists. Despite all the differences and polarizations so strong and intense, we are still the same species - the one that needs closeness, affection, living in tribes, in families.
All images © Sávio Freire and Irmina Walczak
