I am for Peace

Written By Sil Azevedo

Our documentary on world peace is in production and gaining momentum…

This past month we were invited to film the Japan Sister Cities Summit, to take place in Osaka this coming September. We have confirmed an interview at the event with a Japanese philanthropist who survived the carpet bombing of his home town in WWII. We have also confirmed a shoot in Cambodia with a landmine clearing NGO, to take place in October. We have also been in touch with Frame Dance in Houston, with views to a possible artistic collaboration on this project, as well as a pacifist singer-songwriter and a Japanese-American student working with the Peace Cranes project. We are also in touch with indigenous peoples in Brazil and South Dakota with the goal of including their journey of self-determination in the film. These are just a few of the exciting things taking shape as we work on this documentary. For a detailed project description, click here.

Sil Azevedo

I was seven years old when I got my first camera, a Kodak Instamatic 133. It was Christmas of 1973. Since then, I have always seen the world through the lens. It is my way of making sense, of visually dealing with paradoxes and complexities of life. In high school I was the lab rat and spent each free minute at the feet of the Beseler enlarger, hypnotized by its magical light. Still today I enjoy low light ambiences. They say photographers do it in the dark. I am living proof - ha! Architecture school followed as photography was not a career option in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The combination of art, composition, light, form and space, coupled with the demands of physics found in Architecture have their parallel in photography. The concepts are transferable. As I started my career in Architecture, I soon found that I was more excited about the concept and the print than the actual building. Fantasy is my reality. I kept shooting, learning and apprenticing with some incredible artists. In time, as life took its turns, my original passion for photography became my full time profession. It has been almost 20 years since I walked into the pro shop and charged the Hasselblad and the studio lights to my credit card. As he saw the bill and my naive optimism, even the salesman exclaimed, "you're going to have to sell a lot of pictures..." I did and still do, but what drives me is not that. It is the unstoppable desire to understand and to relate. To me, that is photography.

http://www.silazevedo.com
Next

Gratitude