Paulo Fridman Photography – Award Winning Photographer in Brazil

Talking Images

In 1999, Paulo Fridman walked around the district of Vila Madalena, as well as on Paulista Avenue, Praça da República, Galeria do Rock, Largo da Batata and several other places and landmarks in the city of São Paulo with a camera, a portable studio, some paper, a pen and a few questions in hand:

Who are you?
What is your dream?
How do you see Brazil’s future?

His target: ordinary people on the streets of Brazil’s largest city and also home of Latin America’s greatest sociocultural diversity. Each person was asked to write down or draw the answer to one of the three questions, to then be photographed.

Back at his studio, Paulo Fridman submitted both the pictures and texts – or drawings – to a digital fusion process, far more complicated at the time then it is today. This is how the Brazilian Portraits were born, available on the site under the same name, whose purpose was to provide an opportunity for people to be photographed and take pictures of themselves.

Time has passed and the project has increased both in size and in meaning. One day, Paulo realized that by bringing into light the thoughts, conflicts, ideas and dreams of those who were anonymous up to that given moment, people were practically speaking in their portraits – their portraits became talking portraits. Thus the name Talking Images was born.

Since then, the Talking Images experiment has obtained several achievements. The project was such a huge hit that during his trips abroad, Paulo took the Talking Images proposal to London, New York, Mumbai and Paris. These portraits have never been shown before and are part of the exhibit you are about to see.

Fourteen years later, with cutting edge technology and a new perspective on both Brazil and the world as a whole, Talking Images closes a cycle and travels back to its origin: the streets of São Paulo.

In this new format, you are invited to take pictures and be photographed. There will be a mobile photography studio next to the panels of each exhibit, where you may be photographed, write down or draw you answer to one of the 3 original questions. We will proceed to the photographic fusion on the spot.

Your portrait will be projected on monitors integrated to the photography studio, as well as on the site, and you will also receive a link by e-mail to download it. Join us!