Where Memory Burns, Photographs Remain
Revealing What we Cannot Forget
With his Leica M EV1 in hand, Rui Caria travels through the villages scarred by the fires of 2025 to reveal what we would rather not see — and what we cannot forget.
When the land is reduced to ashes, there are stories that remain untold. In the height of summer 2025, Rui Caria returned to the villages violently ravaged by forest fires in central Portugal. He did not seek easy beauty, but the harsh truth that remains after the silence of the flames.
With the Leica M EV1 as his companion, he photographed the traces, the suspended gestures and the fragility of the communities that resist. His images become living memory — a call not to let what is lost, and cannot be rebuilt or recovered, disappear from our collective consciousness.
It is increasingly important that we stop and reflect on our actions so that nature remains intact for future generations. Photography, as an object of memory, plays a fundamental role in creating a collective consciousness capable of changing attitudes over time.
Rui Caria
Photographing the Invisible
Almost always, when we take photographs, we point our camera at what we most like to see. It seems instinctive. But for Rui Caria, a documentary photographer, it is often what he would rather not see that he points his camera at. The result of this choice is sometimes more valuable. Photography ceases to be merely an object of contemplation and takes on the form of a historical document, something for future memory, a kind of reminder of what we are losing.
Rui Caria
The challenge of trying to tell the other side of a story that has been told so many times was what led Rui Caria to visit some of the villages most affected by forest fires in central Portugal. The summer of 2025 will go down in history as the year of the largest forest fires in that region since records began in Portugal.
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Rui Caria
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Rui Caria
Leica M EV1, Rui's Best Choice
Rui Caria chose Leica's M system to produce all his photographic work and, this was the best choice he has made in his professional life, not only because of the consistency of the visual signature he has created, but because the pleasure of photographing is part of the process. In the last 7 years, the photojournalist has been working exclusively with the M system, both for long-term documentary work and for daily news stories, proving that there are no limitations in equipment. And adding the Leica M EV1 to your M system will now allow him to take full advantage of the latest M lenses.
The camera can never be bigger than the story it tells, and the simplicity of a small object like this, incapable of intruding on the photographer's relationship with the subject, is essential to me. And today, I chose the Leica M EV1 because it offers me a body I already know with technology that complements my traditional M system.
Rui Caria
Equipment Used by Rui Caria
Rui Caria
Rui Caria is a Portuguese photojournalist from Nazaré. He collaborates with various media outlets and communication agencies in Portugal and abroad. His photographic work is recognized by editors of the most diverse publications and his images have been published in several international photography books. Rui Caria is a master in Communication and Media, and he is a speaker at events dedicated to visual communication, photography, and photojournalism. He has articles on photography and imagery published in the national and international press. With a body of photographic work exhibited in various countries, Rui Caria has been a finalist and winner of several photography competitions, including the Sony World Photography Awards, 2019/2015.
His photojournalistic and documentary work includes the war in Ukraine in 2022, where he went for 40 days, and his coverage in 2017 of a FRONTEX mission in the central Mediterranean Sea, where he spent 34 days photographing the routes of illegal migrants and refugees. Both works were later highlighted. The first, in the book Ukraine: A War Crime, and the second was awarded photojournalistic series of the year 2018 by Monovisions Photography Awards Magazine.
Rui Caria's work focuses on social causes, human rights, and the environment. He is particularly interested in documenting the lives of ordinary people and the challenges they face. His work is a contribution to the field of photojournalism, reporting on some of society's most critical issues.