It is a young men looking for the perfect picture . Likes the spontaneous. Of the moment immortalized in the frame of his lens. Wants to capture the essence of people without them realizing it. It is a freelancer and is always seeking the next adventure ...
João Mendonça doesn't defined himself as a photojournalist or photographer, not even as an artist, he interprets his work, "as a person who sees, what looks around and tries to discover new things." What interests him are the people, the subjects of his lens because he considers that "there is no equal and each one has its essence, has something special, I just find it interesting that for each can be different at various times . I try to capture their souls. " He is like a chameleon who tries to confuse himself with the landscape that surrounds it to "catch the right moment, the key moment." He likes this feeling of invisibility because he doesn't appreciates the forced smiles, even says that "having to interact with people is not my forte, I want to go unnoticed, be discreet because I know that I interfere with the picture, and when people notice the existence of a camera they tend to be the image they want. " And becouse of this demand for the rawness and reality in its naked photos, he seacks the image always bearing in mind the light, or rather lack of it, " the images live of light and shadow." He illustrates this demand with a black and white photo of a girl lost in the crowd, someone who tries to look and not found. It is perhaps she is a lost and scared girl, and is this instant, this captured moment that he consider to be this preferred image. She did not see him. And he caught her anguish on the split of a second that was immortalized forever by the lens of his camera.
Nature, on the other hand, he approaches it with caution, as someone who trespasses an area other than their own. Find it hard to shoot it as if facing a unique identity in constant motion, as if being too exuberant and lush its a flaw. It's beautiful, but "is not that special look." There is a joyful natural disorder, and he looks for the perfect frame image. A well-defined geometry he learned from the master Cartier-Bresson, which he identifies in style, but does not hit in quality however. Search the threads, looking for the symmetry of objects and recalls the captured photo of a man on the run, the date of February the 20th, 2010. Is someone trying to escape the fury of nature, we see him back to photography, he flees. The image that captured the tragedy of the wild waters that ripped everything appart and eventually the man is nothing but a puppet. Not bossing around, he is not tolerated. "The lines of the table that slides," he says, "give a sense of continuity and that the idea of escape is reinforced by this guy in the corner." John Mendoza is not cold when he describes the scene, he sensed the distress of the man and decided to frize this instant. For posterity, the man did not died. But for history book we have the record of João Mendonça of a period of time we dont want to remember. That's his destiny to be the silent eyewitness of history. And that's all he wants.
