I photographed João Bosco at Princeton in B&W, for Albert Einstein
One reshaped how we understand the universe. The other reshaped how a Brazilian acoustic guitar can speak. Two minds of rare brilliance. A visual parallel with Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer scenes.
This past weekend I photographed João Bosco in Princeton. If his name does not ring a bell, take a few minutes and listen to Incompatibilidade de Gênios, or anything from his catalog with Aldir Blanc. He is one of the great Brazilian songwriters alive, a guitarist whose humbleness, lyrics, narratives and techniques reshaped what a single acoustic guitar could do, and at 79 he still tours like someone with something to prove. He trained as an engineer before music took him in another direction.
Most of the stage photos I am sharing here come from the sound check. Honestly, this is when I prefer to shoot artists. The room is empty, the band is loose, and I can walk right up to the stage without elbowing anyone. That mattered for this shoot in particular, because I was working with a 65mm lens on the Mamiya 7ii (a 35mm equivalent on full frame) and a 35mm on the Leica M7. Both lenses ask you to get close. During a real concert that is impossible. During a sound check, it is exactly the point.
I shot everything on Kodak Tri-X, 35mm and medium format. Nolan shot Oppenheimer on Double-X, the cinema cousin of the same emulsion, for the parts of the film grounded in fact. Same family, different format, same instinct. Color would have been wrong. Color would have explained too much, and some things don’t need explanation because they’re just beautiful.
The day before the concert, we got a surprise. Since João had been invited to perform by the director of the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), the director offered us a private tour. The IAS is not open to the public. It is a working research institute, and you only walk through those halls if someone there invites you. We were invited.
I left the film cameras in the car because I thought we were going on a normal campus walk, not into the actual rooms. Inside the offices I used my phone to register the moment.
We stood inside the office that was once Oppenheimer’s, and is still used by the current director. We also stood inside Einstein’s office.
We walked through the library at Fuld Hall, where both of them worked. João, Angela, and the family were quiet inside those rooms. There is a particular silence people fall into when they understand where they are standing.
I kept thinking about it on the drive home. Both men trained in technical disciplines before their work moved past the technical and into something the world remembers. Standing in that office, the parallel did not feel like a stretch. It felt like the reason we had been invited.
I want to say something honest, and I hope it does not sound like false modesty. I was there because Julia Bosco, Angela, and Guto Wirtti are friends of mine. Real friends. The kind of friends who feel like family, who think to include you in something like this, who pick up the phone and say come with us. Julia is João's daughter. Angela is his wife. Guto has been his bass player for years. Kiko and Ricardo are João’s bandmates, also my friends. They are all brilliant, generous, funny, and curious, and the fact that I get to stand close to them, to photograph them, to share a weekend like this one, is something I do not take for granted. I felt lucky to be alive. Lucky to be Brazilian. Lucky that the people I love also happen to be the people I most admire.
These photos matter to me more than most things I have made this year. The moment was real. That is what matters, more than the names involved. A Brazilian artist, a Brazilian photographer, both standing inside a building where the 20th century turned, on a weekend in New Jersey. Tri-X seemed like the only honest way to record it.
These are spectacular and so full of emotion!
Fantástico, Rafa! Imagens belíssimas!!