When I first became interested in photography, I swore I would not photograph people. Only landscape for me. However, the summer before my junior year here at PUC, I, along with several of my close friends in Digital Media went with our teacher Terry Branster to Fiji. The trip was to create a video for Steve Arrington and The Dream Machine Foundation and gain some valuable experience in the field, and internship credit. While there, I discovered that photographing people was not as big of a scary monster as I had thought it to be. I also began to enjoy ‘street photography’ something I had never really appreciated or even paid attention to.
Since moving to Brazil two and a half years ago, I have pushed myself to develop a style of my own and to document this place that is very different from what I am used to. I started a blog on my website where I post a ‘photo of the week’ each week, something new, something fresh. Going out into the community to take pictures of strangers in their daily life has been very rewarding. A boy sitting in the window of his home, a mother with four children riding a bicycle to school in the morning, women doing their wash in the river, the street vendor selling his popcorn and cotton candy, and the market.
This small collection of images is from the Mercado São Sebastião in Fortaleza, Ceará. Rows of booths full with bright fruits and vegetables, friendly vendors and shoppers make every trip an adventure, and the prices are cheap! The meats hanging ready to be cut, and the textiles: baskets, pottery, and the traditional ‘cowboy hats’ of Brazil’s Northeast.
I hope you enjoy these images.
Ryan Hoover
Ryan Hoover Photography 