Flávio Cardoso - Recipient of the 2018 TTLC Mentorship

I started working with Michelle Loukidis at @catchupafactory last year. In our very first conversation, I was coming from a very technical background so I had to ask her, how does one teach such a subjective practice, to which she replied: first we’ll have to open your mind, and from there you’ll see.
That is exactly what happened. Working with Michelle has allowed me to perceive photography as the true artistic medium it can be. First by looking at relevant bodies of work made in our local African context, then to practice the hard exercise to translate ideas and feelings into images, starting by looking deeply on the inside.
Working with Michelle in the mentorship program, felt like picking up on where we left off 6 months prior. It has helped me develop this project I started where I challenged myself to portray how I felt about myself while belonging to a modern day privileged middle class in a globalised African country, disgraced by civil war and stigmatised by 500 years of Portuguese colonialism.
Through her experience, she has helped me visualise and consolidate my ideas by constantly challenging the thought process. She brought me down when I need grounding, and lifted me up when I needed to stop overthinking. She may not be familiar with the context I’m working, a country she’s never even been in, but without her, as much as I had to say, I don’t know if I’d be able to create images that convey my feelings with perhaps the same accuracy.
At some point, this whole mentorship stopped being about work, or photography, or art. It felt like therapy. A true liberation of self by the help of a beautiful, assertive, caring and sensitive human being.

Flávio has since been selected for the artist residency Luuanda.

Image by Flávio Cardoso

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