Marco Oliveira Art Collections

The Message Series

It's been almost an year now since I first came up with the idea of doing a series of still lifes. At the time I had a vague idea of what I wanted to do, so I first started collecting rocks from various beaches and riversides as well as other stuff that I thought could come in handy. As time gone by, the idea evolved into a solid concept and, very recently, events just precipitated: first, the stormy weather and high tides brought a lot of seashells and conchs to the coast; second, I finally found the bottle I wanted at my in-laws house; third, during a recent shooting I just ran into a yellow flower that, for some reason, just caught my attention and had to bring it home; fourth, the last time I burned the edges of a piece of paper to make it look old and mysterious was 20 or 25 years ago, when I was just another kid pretending I was a pirate in a treasure hunt (and I was eager to do it again)! So, all that was left for me to do was set up my homemade photo studio, turn on the lights and start shooting! (P.S.: Also, I was doing a lot of landscape photography, the 20mm lens was rarely coming out of the camera and I was missing my 50mm!... It was about time to change lenses!)