At 41 years old, a father of three, and a territorial development strategist at the startup Polvo Lab, Saulo Augusto Jr. creates a photography born from the intersection of his professional commitments and his passion for the documentary. With a background that includes directing documentaries in the sertão (Brazilian backlands), he began to take photography seriously only at the end of last year, turning his constant travels to communities in the interior of the country into a “laboratory for his photographic gaze.” His visual practice emerges naturally from his work with the creative economy and social transformation, using the camera as an extension of his mission to connect territories and tell stories.
His image “Infinite Mirror“, a finalist in the Single Image category of the FotoDoc Photo Contest 2025, is part of the series “Life in the Collective” – poetic records made during his subway commutes to work. The photograph captures a moment of rare urban introspection: a man in a purple suit looking at the sky through the train window, creating an intriguing play of reflections and interiors. More than an everyday scene, the image raises questions about the search for transcendence in a grey city, inviting the viewer to imagine “what he is seeing or thinking.” The work perfectly synthesizes Augusto Jr.’s approach: using the documentary as a way to connect personal stories with urban landscapes, finding poetry in the metropolis’s spaces of transition and displacement.
Learn more about this photographic discovery and the projects that unite beekeeping, cocoa, and quebradeiras de coco babaçu (babassu coconut breakers) in the following interview.
