Passionate about what he does, Xavier Portela is a photographer who learned almost everything by himself. For nine years now, he has traveled the world and shared the images he captures with us. His latest series, Dubai, is part of his Glow collection, which also includes Tokyo, Hong Kong, Bangkok, New York, Taipei, Busan, and Seoul. Glow is a collection of photos taken at night, where the colors attempt to reproduce the variables we have lost compared to the moment of the shooting, such as temperature, noise, and movement. In other words, Glow is not what you saw of a place but what you remember about it,” he explains..
Xavier Portela originally came to the United Arab Emirates after being invited to Sharjah for the XPOSURE international photography festival. After that, he came to Dubai for a few days to quickly create a night series. “It was so hot that it wasn’t very pleasant, especially with temperatures reaching 35°C at midnight… and the condensation on the lenses. But the city was so bright and lively that I couldn’t resist doing a series for my Glow collection,” he explains. As he did with the previous cities, the photographer has also conveyed what he felt when he was in Dubai through his images.
Working on this photo series made me realize that the perception we have of a place is more important than what we observe in reality. When we bring back photos from a trip, we never bring back the smells, sounds, temperature, atmospheres, etc., but often our memories exist based on all of these variables. Since I started this series, I give much more importance to the way I perceive what I photographed; my memory of the scene is more important than what I saw,” he concludes.
To find out more, visit his website , Behance , Instagram , or his Facebook page .
Article updated on 18 October 2024
