Your name
Mario Lalau
Place of birth
São Paulo - Brazil
Place where you live now
Las Vegas - USA
3 words to describe you
Border, Belonging, Intuition
Why do you take pictures?
I take pictures to see. For me, the photographic act is a way of entering a liminal space, to dive into the edges, to listen to the music of thresholds. I feel that in this experience there is a shift in consciousness in which our perception expands, we can touch the unexpected and access more subtle layers. Photography has this fascinating ability to reveal the extraordinary that escapes the distracted, automated and hurried gaze of everyday life. Therefore, photography allows me to gather fragments of this experience and thus propose an acuity in our way of looking at the world.
Where do you get your inspiration?
I spent my life moving places, from São Paulo to the U.S. as a child, back to Brazil as a teenager, and later traveling through different landscapes of the western United States in a van. Each of these changes transformed my perception of the world, teaching me to see beyond the immediate, to notice the subtleties of space. My father, a formidable storyteller, used his narratives to open portals to unknown places and peoples, making it clear that there is always more. My mother, on the other hand, played the piano and transformed our home into a sacred place where sound became silence. There were also her weekly myrrh smoking rituals to energize and cleanse the house. This atmosphere of mystery in which I grew up and the years of nomadism form the core, the inaugural material of inspiration for my works.
Who are your influences?
The writer Haruki Murakami has a huge influence on me and my work. The protagonists of his books often embark on solitary journeys, both physical and internal. His work suggests that loneliness does not necessarily mean emptiness but can be a space of introspection and transformation. His worlds are filled with parallel realities, mysterious symbols, and moments where the ordinary reveals something surreal. Another important influence is my cousin André Cypriano– his documentary photography taught me that images can reveal deep narratives. The works in Rocinha and Caldeirão do Diabo marked me deeply.
What determines the subject matter you choose?
It is the photographs themselves that determine the stories of my works. My creative process begins in the search for a mental state in which I am deeply attuned to the rhythm and breathing of the landscape, whether photographing in the streets of São Paulo or in the ruins of a citadel in Utah. Later, when I already have a considerable body of images, I begin the exercise of observation and attentive listening to these photographs, for this I print all of them and spread them on a table forming a kind of map. Through such study I discover and trace points of connection between some of the photographs, until they reveal the story to me, that is, its most pulsating center. From that moment on, I begin the research and continue photographing focused on the revealed theme.
What impact would you like your art to have?
I just want it to exist beyond me in someone else.
What artwork do you never get bored with?
The first time I saw Jackson Pollock's Cathedral at the Dallas Museum of Art, I felt a deep impact, a desire to return to this painting over and over again. I realized that it was not about the technique, but the final effect. Pollock remains one of the artists I always seek to see in person. I also collect photobooks, which I constantly revisit, such as those by Daido Moriyama, Masahisa Fukase, Claudia Andujar, Luigi Ghirri, Teju Cole, Ren Hang, Vivian Sassen, and Yoshinori Mizutani. Lately, I've been especially drawn to Mikiko Hara's Small Myths, a book that I consider a masterpiece.
Is there anything you want to add?
No
