All images by Nuno Moreira. Used with permission.
Nuno Moreira is a Portuguese photographer who currently nests in Tokyo. He’s done what many photographers only dream of doing: travelling the world’s vast cities and documenting the human condition along the way. Nuno has gathered and edited together his favorite selections in a book called “State of Mind.” State of Mind is a photographic series/book about “the individual quality of mysterious strangers.” The images were captured over a period of several years traveling in countries such as Japan, Portugal, Hungary, Malaysia, Spain, South Korea, Romania, Russia, Taiwan – and what emerged is a visual narrative on the poetic quality of individuality and what it means to be lost in thoughts.
To accomplish the project, Nuno used whatever gear he could get his hands on. For the five year project, he used a Pentax with a 50mm f/1.2, a Canon SLR with an 85mm f/1.2, and a Lomo LC-A. The cameras were loaded with Neopan 1600 and some Tri-X and T-max. “Honestly, I’m not a gear person at all and in my opinion what makes things work is not exactly having all the tools but having something to say or putting something very personal and sincere from who you are into what you are doing.” states Nuno.
When shooting in different countries, Nuno reasons that what changes while traveling is not exactly the backdrop or language but the entire culture of the place you’re shooting. For example, people in Japan generally don’t feel stressed about having a camera near them whilst, lets say, in Russia it might be considered offensive. “I find that the notion of personal space changes quite a lot from the west to the east.”
More of his photos from the series are after the jump.
For more, please follow us on Facebook, Google+, Flickr and Twitter.