Trabalho de Formiguinha with Manuela Lourenço
Name, age, where are you from, what format you like using, what are you currently working on if you are?
My name is Manuela Salgueiro Lourenço, I’m 32 years old, I’m from São Paulo, Brazil, and currently living in Brooklyn, New York. I think my favorite format will always be 35mm. I’m drawn to its simplicity, the grain, and how its texture feels close to low-res printing techniques like riso and offset. There’s something soft and imperfect about the texture that speaks to me.
Lately, I’ve been easing back into research and work mode. I’ve been writing, reading, and reflecting a lot, slowly developing a new idea that’s been quietly cooking in the background. It feels like a dive into my own archive and the past few years of my life—some kind of coming-of-age story. It’s still early, but something is shaping up.
What about your surroundings/environments and upbringing interested you?
I grew up in a big city, but I was always spending a lot of time in nature—either by the ocean or in the countryside. My childhood at my grandparents’ farm really shaped me, especially that particular sense of time, where everything slowed down and moved in rhythm with nature. I think a lot of the poetics I try to bring into my work circle back to that period in my life when things felt simple and contemplative. Even though I was just a kid, I could already sense the beauty in it.
Later on, studying Architecture and Urbanism was definitely formative—both for my personality and for how I see the world. My attention tends to land on spaces, always. I’m deeply interested in why I feel connected to certain places, and how place identity overlaps with personal identity. And now, living as a foreigner—an “alien”—in the U.S., those feelings have only gotten more intense. That awareness is even sharper now.
When was the first time you met photography? How did you feel when you met it?
I actually love this question. I feel like I’ve had many different encounters with photography throughout my life. There are a couple of “founding” memories that come to mind: I remember spending hours and hours looking through family albums or flipping through my mom’s fashion magazines. Those were probably my first real contacts with photography—not making images yet, but definitely some kind of informal visual education happening there.
Then later, in my teens, I got my first camera and became completely enamored. I was photographing everything—taking self-portraits, documenting this renovation at my parents’ house, shooting buildings, places I visited, and little moments. And that was it. I was hooked. Photography became my way of contemplating life.
Tell us about current projects you have been working on (could be any, or just work you have been doing in general). Is this story inspired out of personal reasons, or others? What are you most excited about in these projects?
This is such a hard question for me. I’m very ambitious and I have a hard time focusing on just one thing—I always want to do a million things at once. Lately, though, I’ve been trying to shift this idea that I need to be constantly producing to consider myself an artist, or even productive. Receiving input is part of the process too. I’ve been reminding myself that I don’t always need to generate output to be doing the work.
That said, I am slowly and quietly working on a few things. One of them involves photography, but not only—it’s more rooted in walking as a creative practice, and how that relates to space, memory, and presence. At the same time, I’ve been easing into a reflective headspace, writing a lot about ideas for a new photo project. I’m starting to go back into my archive and trying to trace common threads and organize arcs. Right now, I’m really into writing—it always starts there for me.
These projects are still very much in the early stages, mostly living in my notes, my thoughts, my walks. They feel both exciting and a little daunting, because they push me to learn new things and step out of my comfort zone. I’m also invested in collaboration—finding ways to work with others, build things together, create space for exchange.
So yes—things are brewing. I’m scheming, dreaming, building slowly. It’s a trabalho de formiguinha (hard ant's work), one step at a time. I’m connecting with people, nurturing relationships, and planting seeds for longer-term ideas—some collaborative, some more personal.
How did you find your visual literacy? Why are you attracted to certain images more than others?
I think my visual literacy was first shaped by fashion magazines and editorial imagery in general. That was my earliest contact with printed images—before museums, before group critiques, photo school, or workshops. It was how I started paying attention to photography, almost unconsciously.
Architectural representation, modernist drawings, and graphic design have also played a big role in how I see and compose. In a way, I think a lot of the images I make are still trying to echo that editorial look—clean, composed, intentional.
I’m drawn to images where color, texture, light, shadow, shape, and body language are doing something together. I tend to respond most to photographs that feel painterly or sculptural—where there’s some kind of physicality or atmosphere that pulls you in, even if you can’t quite name it.
