“From an aesthetic point of view, these photos were a combination of two passions of mine, high saturation glitch images with B&W nature landscapes.”

Project #1: BEING A REMOTE WORKER IN THE COUNTRYSIDE

“I decided to move to a small city in the countryside of Brazil around a year ago in pursuit of working remotely in a more relaxing environment. Fortunately, that worked, but as with many remote workers, the pressure still remained.

When taking photos and creating art, I noticed a similar feeling; when out in nature shooting, all my mundane problems disappeared, but as soon as I returned home and started to check my agenda, emails and etc., it all came back.

The editing portion of my creative process often takes place in small breaks during my working day; during these breaks, I couldn’t completely relax and reconnect to that same feeling of when I originally took the photo. It was then that I realized I needed to bring this into my art, as one of the many duties of the artist is to merge both their external and internal realities.

I love how BW photography can convey so well the sense of stillness and peace, but I also wanted to include this overarching feeling of stress. The color pallet and digital interventions express this idea, creating chaos around peaceful and quiet sceneries.

From an aesthetic point of view, these photos were a combination of two passions of mine, high saturation glitch images with BW nature landscapes. I’ve been working in this way in other photographic series as well, adding colorful geometric shapes to BW pictures to better communicate better my internal world when editing.”

Cairo Renato Gomes Pedroso de Lima

Cairo is an American/Brazilian visual artist and educator born in Berkeley, California, and currently living in Canela, Brazil.
His artistic journey with photography began in 2018, working as a freelancer, and later in 2019, completing a photography course in Fluxo Escola de Fotografia e Cinema in Porto Alegre.
Since then, he has explored the concepts of digital manipulation of images focusing on experimentation and pushing the boundaries of photography. While still remaining grounded in the established concepts of composition and color.
He has been published in the digital magazine Slag Glass City by the DePaul University of Chicago.
Since 2020, he has been working as an ESL teacher and currently studying for a bachelor’s degree in English.

“The editing portion of my creative process often takes place in small breaks during my working day; during these breaks, I couldn’t completely relax and reconnect to that same feeling of when I originally took the photo.”

Project #1: THE UNCERTAIN FUTURE OF CALIFORNIA

In this series, through the intervention of colorful geometric patterns in black and white photos, I attempt to tell a story and send a message beyond the image itself.

California is by far one of the most diverse and mesmerizing states in the United States, with Mountains, Beaches, Valleys, and a progressive and extremely wealthy economy.
But, there’s an increasingly growing worry that all this beauty will be lost due to climate change someday.
And California will continue to burn and become a desert-like its counterpart Nevada did in the past.

I chose my favorite pictures of the state and tried to visualize what might endure and what might die in the process. Making them Black and White gave a better contrast to the importance and relevance of certain colorful parts, especially the symbology of the colors used. Red for absolute despair and loss, Orange for uncertainty, and Blue for admiration and hope.

“While revisiting my old photos from California, a thought popped into my head, will these places still exist in 30, 50, or 100 years? How will global warming affect the Sacramento Valley, Bay area, and Sierra Mountains?
In an imagination exercise, I began to wonder what would still remain and what might end up being lost. The colors and geometric forms express this idea, and the black and white background the uncertainty of our future.”

Read the full article in Art Market Magazine Issue #80