This work begins before meaning.
Some moments are lived, others simply pass.
Not all of them ask to be kept.
The moment
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
The moment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
On making
I make photographs while moving.
Most are made while walking, waiting or returning — between places rather than at destinations. I’m drawn to what happens quietly: gestures that don’t perform, moments that pass without insisting on meaning, the way people occupy space when they think no one is looking.
These images are not organised as projects or stories. They are gathered over time and placed together slowly, by proximity and resonance rather than chronology or geography. One image leans against another. Meaning appears, then shifts.
I think of photographs as notes rather than conclusions. They are provisional, attentive and incomplete. An attempt to stay with a moment without resolving it.
This work is less about places than about passing through them — and about noticing what remains, briefly, in between.
Attention needs room.
〰️
Attention needs room. 〰️
Field Notes (a poem)
I look,
and what I see is not only mine.
A body pauses.
A gesture forgets itself.
Joy appears, then withdraws.
This is not me.
This is us, passing.
Birds lift without asking.
Trains continue regardless.
Days move forward, even when we don’t.
I laugh.
I don’t.
Then I laugh again.
Some moments are lived.
Others are only endured.
Nothing stops for understanding.
Everything changes anyway.
I say this quietly, every day:
now, I am here.
Held
A small hand grips the pole while the carriage tightens around it. He looks up, briefly, before the movement closes again.
(Beijing, 2024)
A
SILENCE
HELD
On being
In my thirties.
Based in London, loosely.
Often elsewhere.
I read to understand how others have lived.
I travel to notice what changes — and what doesn’t.
Cultures reveal themselves slowly, if you stay long enough.
I move through public space with a self the world reads before I speak.
European by document and by instinct.
Drawn to borders, crossings and what happens when people meet.
Nothing here feels finished.
That seems important.
J J Oliveira
is
