Fernando Lombardi captured Trancoso with shots that represent unexpected encounters
Fernando Lombardi
On the last day of that trip and with the peace and quiet that only a fishing village can offer with its beautiful landscapes, he saw a house for sale next to the pousada where he was staying. "I bought it, and started staying more and more... I integrated into the social life of Trancoso, not of high society, rather the relationship with the locals," he explains. Before the pandemic, I used to visit regularly, three or four times in the same year, for periods of up to eight months. The main reason he fell for the place was the receptiveness of the population, and from this opening he began capturing the most varied moments and falling in love with this simple and quality life.
Photographer Fernando Lombardi—known in the worlds of fashion and architecture—began frequenting the south of Bahia in 2001, when he began portraying the local characters and landscape. Having lived in Italy since the end of the 1980s, it was more than just a simple getaway, the destination provided the injection of Brazilianness he needed to return to his life abroad. "It was a year of great transformation because, with the celebration of 500 years of Brazil the year before, they made a paved highway (BA-001, linking Porto Seguro to Trancoso and Arraial d'Ajuda). Everything changed in terms of getting about and receiving people," he recalls.
"Photographing the locals was a wonderful experience. I remember their spontaneity and happiness of the photography. Especially, for a reason I only later discovered: Trancoso has a minimal photographic memory prior to the 1980s. With the humidity and salinity of the air, the photographs on paper didn't last very long."
From there, the photographer started collecting moments and eternalizing these routine encounters in the community. Besides people, he felt the need to capture places that, in his words, would be lost in history, such as restaurants or studios of local crafts people. "A photo that would take five minutes, took four hours because they would invite you for coffee, for lunch," he recalls. Today, the friends he has collected over the years and the beautiful house he has built make sure he always returns. "And the desire to be as free as you want," he points out.
From there, the photographer started collecting moments and eternalizing these routine encounters in the community. Besides people, he felt the need to capture places that, in his words, would be lost in history, such as restaurants or studios of local crafts people. "A photo that would take five minutes, took four hours because they would invite you for coffee, for lunch," he recalls. Today, the friends he has collected over the years and the beautiful house he has built make sure he always returns. "And the desire to be as free as you want," he points out.
Super famous people become unknowns in the rhythm of beach life. An example of this was a meeting with the Italian artist Francesco Clemente, an exponent of the Italian Transavanguardia, who went unnoticed by the locals. During these moments, he says, you don't know who you are speaking too, and that is the village's great charm. "On arriving there, it’s like your guard is lowered. It happened to me when I stumbled across Antonio Banderas, in the Quadrado, when he (the actor) was wearing flip-flops and shorts. Only after five minutes of talking, with that feeling that 'I know him from somewhere,' did I realize who it was. They are unexpected encounters," he remembers of that moment which was captured only in memory.
A picture of history
Fernando has a rich archive of Trancoso on Instagram: going from iconic locals, like Dona Frozina—the town's main midwife—and her family, which is a historical institution of Trancoso, to the architecture of the place. "When you do something important, you don't realize it at the moment," says Lombardi. The best part of the archive of the region, in his opinion, was not done with digital photography, but analog with negative film. "You have to wait to develop and blow it up. This lapse in time makes you relive that moment. The best photos of Trancoso were made during the initial period of my stay in Trancoso, a way of getting closer to the community," he explains.
The idea is that in the near future these photographs will become part of a dedicated exhibition in the real estate developer's showrooms, located in the south of Bahia.
