Today I want to share with you a small set of photographs that I was lucky enough to take on my last visit to my compadre. As some of you already know, my goddaughter's father is a fisherman. And what better setting than a beach on a clear late autumn morning on the beautiful Angeiras beach?
The calloused hands, thickened by hours, days, weeks, months, years and even decades of handling ropes, traps, tools and other instruments, mean that these men, with whom I've had the privilege of sharing a couple of conversations, have an almost uninhibited choreography of fingers and hands.
Their age no longer allows them to venture out into the early hours of the morning on a boat that has been out to sea more times than they can count... Luck, prayers and hopes of an excellent and fruitful fishing trip are all acclaimed and wished for. May good health always come, but if the nets come with something to eat and more to sell, the more joy they will bring.
From a morning very well spent, I remember the confidences, the fears, the adventures and exploits that these two men, now old, and once fearless young men, who took to the sea between stumbles and poorly designed starts, but always dreamed of.
I hope that one day, I too, will be able to tell the stories, fears, adventures and achievements that I have made, in which I wish you a long life and that my hands will probably be calloused, because God wanted my profession to be blessed with the grace of not having to risk my life, and submit to the hardships and forced labour that trace deep valleys in sun-tanned skin.
Photographic edition with PhotoScape X
