GENERATIONS by THE WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER IN ALGARVE
The photographs are taken in Agostos near Faro, in the Algarve, showing the various generations that can be at a wedding
- Pode ler este artigo em Português.
What We Can See on a Wedding Day
I don’t like putting photographs of children here, even those who swarm among everyone on a wedding day. But, for today’s subject, I could not choose anything else, because they show one of the things that has always fascinated me since I became a wedding photographer, right at the beginning.
It is true that, before that, I had a certain prejudice about weddings. Perhaps because I had never seen a wedding with the eyes of someone whose job is to take it with him in the form of photographs. It is an important difference.
Being at a wedding as a guest is one thing. Being there to look at everything and try to understand what deserves to remain in a photograph is something completely different.
And the more weddings I photograph, the more I realise that there is much more to see there than what happens during the ceremony or what, at first, one imagines should be photographed.
Love for the Couple
The things we can see on a wedding day could be the subject of doctoral theses in academic courses in sociology or even philosophy. Any of the arts could send their artists there to find the subjects, the inspiration, or the forms that the day offers, so generously, to everyone who is there.
For my part, as a wedding photographer, I am not complaining. And I am still very far from having reached the end of my reason for always wanting to go back.
There is always something that catches my eye.
Not necessarily what is in the centre. Often it is somewhere beside it. It may be a child passing by, a hand holding another hand, someone looking at somebody who is not noticing. It may be in the way different ages occupy the same space and, for a few hours, seem to be part of one single thing.
Among all the things I have already written here about them- weddings, those who get married, those who witness them, or those who prepare them- I think this is the first time I have remembered the generations.
And perhaps that is precisely where I feel like looking today.
A Meeting of Generations
A wedding day is a gathering of so many people who come from so many places and with so many kinds of ties that they all end up together, there, in those spaces of ceremony and celebration, united by the same reason: love for the couple and, by extension, love for one another.
It is something you can see.
There is no need for anyone to explain it.
There, on a wedding day at Os Agostos, in the Algarve, I find the baby in his uncle’s arms, the parents teaching their little girl to walk, the grandmother who takes care like no one else, or the grandfather who carries with him, just like the wedding photographer, the photographs that will become memories of those moments of affection and so much love.
They are small events, perhaps almost insignificant to someone who is simply passing through. To me, they are not. They are precisely those small things that make a wedding stop being just a ceremony and also become a place where life shows itself.
And there is something particularly beautiful when different generations appear together in a photograph.
- The baby who is only just beginning.
- The parents who accompany those first steps.
- The grandparents who already carry an entire lifetime with them.
- And everyone else who, at that moment, belongs to the same photograph.
I don’t know whether it is because I am behind a camera that I notice these things more. Perhaps it is. What I do know is that they are images that make me stop.
Life That Continues
Probably, that is the most important thing one can find on a wedding day. Which is nothing more than a gathering of people with an excuse: a wedding ceremony.
But perhaps it is only the excuse.
Because what is really there may be something else. It may be the opportunity for some to show others that life will always be possible and will always be present along that continuous line that is time.
It is a life based on love.
And what better reason than a ritual of love to show that this is so?
Those who are at the beginning will make sure that it continues to be so. Those who have already lived through much will be there to witness it. Those who are still learning to walk may, without knowing it, be one of the best images of what is happening.
That is why I like finding these things.
Not because I look for a hidden message in every photograph, nor because I want to turn a wedding into some great explanation about life. Simply because, when I look, they are there.
What the Wedding Photographer Sees
Perhaps this is one of the reasons why I still like going back to weddings so much.
I don’t know exactly what I am going to find.
I only know that there will be people of different ages, with different stories and with ties that bring them closer together. And, in the middle of all that, there are moments that happen only once, but that a photograph can keep.
Wedding photographs end up bringing much more with me than the couple.
They bring the people who were there.
They bring the gestures that perhaps nobody noticed were happening.
They bring the grandmother, the grandfather, the uncle, the parents, the child who barely knows what is happening yet. They bring, without great explanations, what brought them all together on that day.
And perhaps that is the part that interests me most: understanding that generations, in people, are in the end nothing more than a beautiful wheel constantly rolling through time.
A wheel that does not stop.
A wheel full of life that keeps renewing itself.
And which, on that day, for one of those reasons that life finds to bring us together, stands whole before my eyes.
Point by Point:
- A wedding could be the subject of several studies in several academic fields. The wedding photographer is still very far from having exhausted the subject.
- Among all the things that can be seen at a wedding, the generations and the ties that connect them can go unnoticed, but they are there.
- A child in someone’s arms, first steps taught by parents, or the care of a grandmother can say a great deal about the relationships between people.
- A wedding seems to show the importance of life as a great wheel that does not stop in time, full of life that keeps renewing itself through love.
You Need to Know
The photographs in this article were taken at Os Agostos, near Faro, in the Algarve.
It is there, through photographs, that the photographer tries to bring out what he finds at a wedding: the importance that life has, not only for those who are getting married, but also for everyone who is part of that moment.
Conclusion:
This is what I saw today.
It was not only children, parents, or grandparents. It was entire generations gathered together for a very simple reason and, at the same time, enormous: love for the couple.
Perhaps a wedding has this ability to show us, for a few hours, that time is not only what passes. It is also what remains, what is passed on and what continues.
At least that is how the wedding photographer saw things today.
And, for that, photography served its purpose too.
If You Would Like Me to Be There
There are weddings where what interests me most to photograph is not necessarily where everyone is looking. It is in the people, in their gestures and in the way different generations end up meeting on the same day.
If that is also what you would like to keep from your wedding, you can talk to me. Perhaps, in the middle of everything that is going to happen, I will find some of those things that exist only once.