Under a burning sun
Just a few minutes on Google Street View reveals that Vasco Trancoso’s home town is a pretty exciting place for a street photographer. The hard, direct and piercing Portuguese sun creates deep, sharp-edged shadows in the narrow streets. And every now and then those dense blankets of shade are slashed open by bright blades of golden light that streak across the pavements to play on the faces of the vibrant buildings. Contrasts of highlights and shade mix with conflicting colours, textures of wall tiles and flaking paint, and bejewelled by the shapes of natives going about their daily life against a backdrop of solid architectural lines.
You can see this too in Vasco’s new book, 99 – a visual exploration of the compositional potential of a town called Caldas da Rainha.
Unlike a lot of photographers who›claim to be documenting the life or people of a place, Vasco is happy to admit he is rather more interested in creating visually stimulating pictures. ‘Above all,’ he says, ‘my work is an interpretation of the reality. I don’t try to describe places I
