On set with the medium format, Milan
Born
Porto, 1989
Studios
Lisbon & Milan
Cameras
35 mm, medium format, digital
Represented by
Bureau Nord, Paris
You started as a printer, not a photographer.
Four years in a darkroom in Porto, printing other people’s work for galleries and magazines. I learned what a good negative looks like long before I knew how to make one. It still shapes everything: I light for the print, not for the screen.
Your sets are famously quiet. Is that on purpose?
Completely. I book about half the people a set normally has and ask for no music while we shoot. When a room is calm, the model stops performing for it, and that is the picture I’m waiting for.
Why all the flat colour?
Because it’s honest. A backdrop in one colour tells you exactly where the light is and where the clothes end. Chartreuse, cherry, sand: each story gets one, and I build the palette of the clothes around it.
What do you ask of a new client?
Two things: a real date, and one reference they’re slightly embarrassed by. The embarrassing one is always closer to what they actually want.
And the photograph you still haven’t taken?
Snow falling indoors, in a room with the windows open. I’ve tried twice. The third time I’ll get it.
The Masthead · p.15
Autumn / Winter 2026 · Lisboa — Milano
Photographer & Creative Director
Odile Varga
Studio Manager
Tomás Reis
First Assistant
Giulia Ferri
Digital Operator
Rui Amaral
Retouching
Atelier Sal
Set Design
Casa Bruma Studio
Representation
Bureau Nord, Paris
Prints & Editions
Galeria Sete, Porto
A studio of six and a long list of friends. Everyone on a set is credited, every time.
Published in
Selected covers, 2024–2026
Vellum Quarterly
Red Weather, p.22
Fold Magazine
Heat Index, p.38
Rivage
Hothouse, p.70
Nocturne
Noir, Slowly, p.80
Clients & collaborators · 2014–2026
On the wall · p.16
2026
“Weather Report”, solo exhibition
2025
Shortlist, Portrait of Fashion Prize
2024
“Hothouse”, book launch
2023
“New Colour”, group show
2022
Emerging Photographer Grant
Commissions open · Spring / Summer 2027
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