Nuno Moreira: State of Mind

Review by Richard Storm

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It could be said that our bodies are just vessels for the ghosts that inhabit them. That’s a fancy way of saying that when we zone out and look like no one’s home; the mind is at work doing a million things at once or not. We have all fallen victim to that slow burn of a brain haze where life is happening all around us and our rhythm falls out of place and we are transported deep within ourselves to parts unknown. State of Mind is a book by Nuno Moreira that captures exactly that.

The photos in this book capture people withdrawn into themselves if only for a split second in time. A moment short enough or long enough to allow a silent unknown observer to snap a photograph on his camera capturing that fleeting glimmer of being apart from the human race if not for one quarter of a second. It’s really quite poetic once you get a good hard look at the photographs in the book. The black and white composition of these photos lends itself well to grasping that elusive stark existence that happens in the interim between seconds. It’s as if color is somehow not enough to capture the subtle nuances of someone truly zoning out.

As you flip through this stunning book you will find yourself ensconced a story of your own creation as you look upon people from different walks of life that have no idea they are being observed. I had fun going through this book page by page and concocting little stories about who I saw on the page. I think with a book like this that is half the fun. The photos in this book are captured in varied places like Japan, Portugal, Spain, Malaysia, Russia, and Taiwan to name a few. Through these images we can tie the human race together with the one commonality that sometimes we are just a million miles away.

Nuno Moreira explores this concept of something unique that ties us together and by the end of the book you are left with wanting more but you are also left with many unanswered questions about the subjects. His search for the ethereal nature about humanity leads us to question our own place in the universe and how we are viewed three dimensionally by a hidden eye.

To purchase the book or see more of Nuno Moreira' work: nmphotos.org