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“Show Notes”
Jay Garrido is a Mozambican photographer. He studied film inCape Town. However, the film industry in Mozambique is not very developed, so he turned to photography. He started with weddings but transitioned to magazine work and now wants to return to his creative roots. While in Cape Town, there was a diverse mix of people from various cultures.
Marcus asks about photography in Africa. Jay talks about photographer Mario Macilau. He grew up in a poor neighbourhood. By chance, he got his hands on a camera that was donated to him because his photos were so good. He is now a top photographer. Jay says there is a lot of culture to present through photography. He says the market is growing exponentially. There is a school of photography in Cape Town where lots of experimental photography and he got to see lots of their work while in Cape Town.
Jay says the commercial market in Mozambique is also growing. He had an opportunity to work with a high-level Portuguese magazine. He felt working with them forced him to level up his work. After that, he worked with Indico for 5years, which is the magazine of the Mozambican airline. This meant he didn’t just work for the magazine but also with the businesses advertising in the magazine. This helped him move into commercial photography. He says the commercial market is growing rapidly, as it is in many other African countrieslike Angola and Nigeria.
Jay is sure that good photographers coming to Mozambique with their style would make a lot of money. Jay says that the photographers who do their own look are well ahead of everyone else and can pick who they work with. Jay has also worked for agencies here in Mozambique, both in photography and video work. He wants to eventually become a director of photography once the film industry starts to develop. He has managed to spend time shadowing a Portuguese director of photography.
Jay has got a lot of work from word of mouth. His work with the magazine meant he met a lot of people in business. He has also found that wedding work has led to commercial work due to the people he has met at the weddings, who liked his work.
Jay and Marcus also discuss weddings in Mozambique. Mozambique has some stunning beaches and five-star resorts, which are amazing for weddings. Marcus likes the sound of Mozambique and wonders if he should move out to join Jay and Sam.
The podcast is now on YouTube, and you can see our YouTube channel here.
You can reach out to Jay on Instagram here
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“Show Transcription”
Sam: Hello Marcus. How are you doing?
Marcus: Oh, I’m very well, Sam. Yeah, I’m very well. How are you?
Sam: Excellent. Really good, Marcus. And this is a first ever because my guest is here next to me. For those who watch it on YouTube, you can see arms going between between frames.
So we have with us today a Mozambican photographer, Jay Gavido. Welcome to the show, Jay.
Jay: Thanks for inviting me, Sam. Marcus also extending the thank you to you. It’s a pleasure to be here. I have podcasts of my own, so it’s actually quite a novel thing for me to do to be a guest on a podcast.
Sam: And we’ll put your podcast details in the show notes for people. So do you want to introduce yourself, Jay?
Jay: OK, so as they said, my name is Jay, or I’m known as Jay Garrido, but my actual name is João Garrido. The Jay came from studying abroad and people not being able to pronounce my name. And I just told them to the first letter of it, which is the J, and that was that. And that was about 20 years ago when I went to study at UCT. I did two majors. One was for film history and the second one was for media writing. And then I had two more minors. One was in contemporary art and the other one was in literature. I was kind of trying to overachieve, but then that bit me in my behind later on in the course. But it was really fun and it gave me a lot of insights. And then I came back to Mozambique and the film industry still wasn’t developed. I feel like it still isn’t. So I kind of opted to go into commercial photography and wedding photography is what I did the most. And then at some point I went into editorial photography. I’ve worked with a couple of magazines and I’m still working for some magazines. And that’s been my course so far. At the moment I’ve gone into sort of a management position in my own company. So that took away some time of fun with the photography. So I’ve kind of gone back to my roots and I kind of want to go back into doing some artistic stuff, some experimental stuff. Just for the sake of it not because it’s a commission for a client or because it’s for a magazine or anything like that.
But really just to explore the art of it and the fun of photography that kind of brought me into it.
Sam: Amazing. What’s UCT?
Jay: University of Cape Town. The University of Cape Town, which is my alma mater at this point. They were advised at the time they were the 36th best university in the world. Which kind of says a lot when you factor in that the U.S. has 50 states and then you’ve got the U.K. Also with some great universities and a lot of great universities in Europe and to have one in Africa that’s the 36th in the world. And it was at the time also number one in Africa, number one rated university in Africa. So that was a no brainer for me at the time. And I feel like it was a right choice because I also had lots of colleagues that came from the U.S. and Australia and Germany and stuff. And there was lots of cultural interchange and conversation regarding arts, including photography, which was really, really enriching for me. Which I feel like I wouldn’t have if I had done exactly the same course just here in Mozambique.
Marcus: Well, you’ve covered a lot of ground there and you’ve always had your career is quite varied. But let’s dive in there straight away. Maybe we can discuss. Let’s discuss the state of photography in Africa at the moment. What can you tell us about that?
Jay: I’m actually in love with how photography is working in Mozambique in particular. But in Africa as a general thing, you’ve got a lot of up and coming photographers doing some great stuff. I have a friend of mine, which I also got to witness his growth in the African photography markets, which his name is Mario Masilau. I don’t know if you’ve heard of him. He started off, he was basically a very low income kid who, for some reason, and it was a sheer stroke of luck. He actually had the opportunity of playing with the camera from someone that met him at some point, gave him a camera, and immediately showed some promise in terms of what his photography eye was. And they gifted the camera to him and he’s won lots of prizes for photojournalism and documentary stuff, and even art stuff, and he’s ventured into other things. And that pretty much gives you a quick summary of what happens in the African photography scenario, because there’s lots to be explored in terms of what the African culture has to present in terms of stories and history that you can then try and portray in your photo documentaries, even in your artistic documentaries or artistic work. There’s lots and lots to present that I feel like the world has still not tapped into it.
So there’s absolutely an exponential growth year after year where you see more and more people coming out of the African photography markets.
Sam: And then there’s plenty of space for these people and it’s growing.
Jay: Yeah, one of the things that having studied at UCT, I got the opportunity to also be exposed to some of the expos that they did in Cape Town. There’s a Cape Town School of Photography. They give you small courses and also long ones for photo documentary, photojournalism and artistic photography and all that stuff. And every once in a while they’ll host some expos, and I really got to see some really cool experimental stuff with people that are still shooting in film. There was one guy that was shooting in expired Ilford’s film, so he was getting his colors all jumbled up instead of getting the accurate colors. But that’s what they were going for. There were people shooting with pinhole cameras made out of Coke cans. So these are all things that are being done all over the world, but then when you put the African creative with all these endless opportunities and techniques that you can go and use, you start to see that there’s lots and lots to still be explored and that there’s lots of creative minds out here that are still waiting to be tapped into where it comes to your photography market.
Marcus: Yeah, certainly in the art market, Africa is very well represented in certainly recent years. And what about in the commercial market, Jay? Can you comment on that?
Jay: The commercial market is also something that I feel is growing. I’ve been tapped to work with a couple of magazines and editorial stuff here. And I’ll tell you that it was a bit of a challenge at the beginning. The first magazine was called Villa Gigolf. It’s a Portuguese magazine that’s like upper class. They don’t even sell the magazine. It’s paid for by the ads that go on the magazine. So, you know, they call me in and they say, OK, we’d like you to work with us on this magazine. We’re looking for a good photographer that does editorial stuff. And this was I was on my third or fourth year of my photography career here in Mozambique, not having had a lot of challenges to that level. And then they hand me a magazine and on the very first page of the magazine, you see a Ferrari on it. And then on the on the other page, you see, you know, a Rolex or a Patek Philippe watch being advertised. And you start to understand that you are dealing at a higher level of finance and they expect a higher level of photography as well. As a result, I ended up leveling up by working with them because I felt like I wanted to to be able to do international standard or international level or greater photography. And that was my very first experience with with with that. And after that, I got to work with the Indico magazine, which is the one that is on the Mozambican airline. Also, not not a magazine you can buy. It’s offered to people. I did a five year tenure with them. I was one of their three photographers. They had three photographers only working. And that was also an experience in terms of commercial photography, because part of what I had to do was to also shoot stuff for their clients that needed to do advertising on the magazine. So I also had to do some of the advertising photography. And that also gave me a bit of an understanding of how your commercial photography works, that you can’t just go in there with a camera in the lens and expect to deliver special results when everybody else is using strobes and lights and the best lenses you could possibly get. So through that tenure of working with different magazines, I made a lot of commercial contacts. And then I started transitioning from weddings, which was what I did initially. And a lot of it’s into the commercial side of things. And now I’m mostly working with, you know, companies rather than than just your one to one with people for, you know, family photo shoots or your weddings and stuff like that. Now I’m doing commercial shoots for companies mostly and managing their social media presence. So that requires social media level and high level photography for them. And I feel like it’s a growing market. If Mozambique, which is such a small country in terms of commercial space, is getting this much growth. I’m fairly sure that everywhere else in Africa and in bigger markets, certainly like you’re, you know, in Nigeria and South Africa, you are definitely an Angola, I think as well. They’re also in good growth. I feel like the market is very much ripe for the day.
Marcus: And you must have noticed that as well, Sam, obviously you’re based there as well.
Sam: Yeah, I mean, yeah, it’s kind of we’re starting from a tiny base economy on the journey and it is just growing. It’s a really useful population here. So I think about 50% of the population under 80. Oh, that’s a massively exploding country in terms of population and so on. And there’s a massive potential. Yeah, for the commercial stuff to take off. But equally a lot of challenges.
Marcus: So I packed my bags. My bags and come over.
Jay: I looked at your Instagram and I’m fairly sure that you make a killing here in Mozambique because one of the things that I’ve been, you know, there’s lots of people doing photography, sure. But there’s lots of people doing photography using shortcuts like your presets. And, you know, when you have to do your frequency separation for skin cleanups and all that, people are going with the presets. And, you know, there’s a whole lot of photography that looks like it’s done by the same person. But if you go and look at it, that’s actually 10 different photographers doing the same kind of look. So once you establish your own look and it’s different from that, you’re going to make a killing. And that’s exactly what’s happening right now. I’ve got a couple of references of people here in Mozambique that do their own look. And there’s so much ahead of everybody else that they’ve created a demand that they’re now picking who to work with. That’s, you know, so once you establish your own look, that’s what happens.
Sam: Amazing.
Jay: So you make a killing.
Marcus: Definitely.
Sam: And then so you’ve done quite a bit of work with agencies, I understand.
Jay: Yeah, I’ve worked with a couple of agencies here in Mozambique, in part because of the magazines as well. One of the magazines was actually being created. Indico magazine was being created by an agency. And I also did some commercial work for them and I’ve done video work as well for agencies, which kind of falls into the photography thing. It’s just a different step of it. Because technically my actual end game as a career is to be a director of photography.
Marcus: Oh, DOP.
Jay: Yeah, I want to be a DOP. You know, at the end of my career, I’ve actually worked with a Portuguese soap opera that they did here in Mozambique in 2015. And I was a drone operator for that, but the entire time I was shadowing the DOP for the thing. And the guy was like, if you want to be part of this industry, this is basically what you have to do. You shadow the person that’s doing what you would like to be doing so that you learn the ropes of it and eventually ask for a chance. And if you’re doing good shadowing, they’re going to give you some light and then you’re going to be the one that someone shadows at some point. And that’s part of what I did on my trip to Portugal. I actually went down to sit down with the actual DOP for that soap opera so that I could figure out whether there was a market for me to go work with them there because the production is always done in Portugal. That was one exceptional case that they did in Mozambique. So yeah, I went and met with a guy to try and see if I could join their production crew in Portugal whenever they have and if they need. And it seemed like a positive conversation. So the agency work here, it’s a bit of a two-way thing because you’ve got the agencies that don’t have any in-house crew for productions, whether it’s audio, video or photography or graphic design. They basically just come up with concepts and then deliver it to a client. But between coming up with the concept and delivering to the client, they have a bunch of people that they sub-hire. I’ve worked with some of those. And then you’ve got the agencies that also have in-house, like your GOLO has everything in-house, your photographer, film director, graphic design, 3D guys, everything, everybody is in-house. So it’s very rare that an agency like GOLO will go out and hire someone to do their photography. But there are lots of agencies, and most of the agencies here have figured out that little space in the market where they can exist without having all the fixed costs of having an entire crew, and they can sub-hire per project and budget as the client asks for.
Marcus: I definitely noticed there’s definitely been a rise in ducks in-houses, as you say, covering the whole gamut, not only putting the suit together but bringing in the talent, bringing in the staff, all that kind of thing, even acting as an agent, really, as you were saying.
Jay: Yeah. So I have a company here, and we call ourselves a creative studio, but we do not do any marketing campaigns for anybody. We basically execute it for them. I’ve got a couple of clients that I… And that’s a choice of mine, not a prerogative of the company itself, that I actually do try and create some marketing stuff for them, some campaigns for them, because I do have somebody in my company that did a marketing course. So I do a little bit of an interchange with him, and we come up with some campaigns for specific clients. But for the most part, we want to be the production house that gets hired by a marketing agency. I feel like as a business model, that works better for me than to have the responsibility of generating all the marketing campaigns at the moment. I might get into that at some later point, but at the moment, I’m still enjoying… I’m still quite enjoying the production side of things rather than the pre-production and the concepts and all that. I like being in the field, so to say.
Marcus: Getting it done.
Jay: Exactly.
Marcus: Give me the job. I’ll get it done for you. Yeah, I can definitely see that.
Sam: And it sounds like a lot of your career in business has basically come through networking effectively, through the course you did, and then through the agency putting you in the magazines who are putting you in touch with more people and more people, and it’s grown that way. It doesn’t sound like you’ve been out doing lots of marketing, or have you been doing that? And we haven’t heard about it.
Jay: No. That’s actually curious, because it has been a lot of word of mouth. I have this thing where I feel like I don’t like to show what I’m doing, which is really, really bad, because when I’m doing really good stuff, I mean, if you go and look at my Instagram, you’ll see that my posting is very irregular. I’ve got lots of photos that I haven’t published. I’ve got a couple of artistic projects that I’m supposed to do, you know, exhibitions with, and I’m just letting them, you know, simmer there. One of them has been going on. It’s not going to be 10 years, that I’ve been taking pictures for 10 years, and I promised myself I was going to do the exhibition by 2020, but then COVID came and all that, and I’ve just, you know, been letting them simmer. I’ve got two or three projects that could have gone to exhibition already, but I’ve just been letting it simmer. So I haven’t done a lot of marketing. It really has been word of mouth, and a lot of it has come from the magazine work, because I had to go and meet multiple people every single time. I had to go do a shoot for interviews and for the documentaries at the magazine, you know, what’s putting out. I’d have to go and shoot the stuff to match the text. But then there’s also been a lot of networking coming from the wedding side of things, where when I was shooting weddings, I’d be shooting a couple, and then the uncle is a minister of this, or a CEO of that, and they really enjoy how I’m moving throughout the wedding, and then when they see the end product, they’re like, okay, give me the context for that photographer, because I need some work. So it’s been a lot of networking, definitely.
Sam: So if we can put this into context in a little bit for people. So Maputo is a city of a few million people, which sounds big.
Jay: It’s two million.
Sam: But actually, the people with money and the people who can afford, Jay, for a wedding and the people in commerce, it’s a small number of people.
Jay: Oh, yeah.
Sam: So it’s a town where everybody knows everybody. But if we transfer that to the UK, if you’re in a niche, and you’re starting to get to know people, it’s similar, isn’t it? You know, once you’re in a tight niche, everybody knows everybody, and it is growing that network, isn’t it? It’s just here. It’s the whole city.
Marcus: Yeah, I get it.
Jay: We’ve got… Go ahead, go ahead.
Marcus: So if I may just change, just to quickly touch on weddings, because I do know some of our listeners do do weddings. I would imagine it’s a great destination wedding venue, or place, sorry, whatever word, destination wedding place for weddings. Is that the case?
Jay: Absolutely. I have been able to shoot…
Marcus: Probably a question really, that’s nice.
Jay: A couple of them. Here in Mozambique, I think I’ve shot, so I’ve shot one in Catembe, which is across the bay. On the other side of Maputo is Catembe, and they’ve got like a little gallery hotel by the beach, which kind of provides you with some visuals. You’ve got Pontadoro, which is a beach about 120 kilometers away. I’ve also shot a wedding there.
I’ve shot in Iambana, which is about 400 kilometers away. And I’ve also shot in Pemba, which is 2,000 kilometers away. It’s all the way up north. I’ve had the opportunity to shoot weddings in some of the most beautiful places here in Mozambique by the beach.
Sam: And the places by the beach here are stunning. They have some of the most stunning beaches in the world.
Jay: Yeah, they’ve got a lot of…
Sam: Many visitors.
Jay: We’ve got a lot of white sand beaches, and then once you’ve managed to…
Marcus: Not a lot of visitors.
Sam: Yeah, so the beaches, it’s difficult. For South Africans, they’re next door, and they can come in. But obviously, if we’re talking, the people who can afford to come to beach resorts, we’re talking from further aboard, and with visa systems, and all sorts of things. It’s a complicated process. And a lot of the really nice places by the beach are expensive, aren’t they, Jay? You know, there was some really fancy stuff where you can spend $1,000 a night staying.
Jay: Easily.
Marcus: Right.
Jay: So just so you can have an idea, when I was shooting the soap opera, the Portuguese soap opera, I stayed at a place in Bengerra, which is in Basarutu. Yeah. It’s at the top of the south of Mozambique. So Basarutu is an island that’s considered a national park. So it’s protected and everything. So they’ve got their, you know, it’s a five-star hotel.
Sam: Yeah, I mean, it’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve been on Earth. It’s stunning with these white signs and islands.
Jay: Exactly. One of the… So I stayed in a house, and one of the villas there, they call it Villa Amizad, because it’s got two rooms. That place costs $2,000 a night.
Marcus: Wow.
Jay: Yeah. So obviously the soap production was paying for it because all the gear was also staying at that unit. But just so you can have an idea, that’s how expensive it can get. But that’s the kind of place where you have your… At the time when we were shooting the thing there, Cristiano Ronaldo, the soccer player, was actually hosted there, but on the other side of the resort, in a very specific, like the presidential villas, it’s isolated from everybody else, which probably costs even more than the one I was in.
Marcus: Of course.
Jay: But that’s that kind of place. And you’ve got a couple of them.
Sam: Harry visited a little while ago today.
Jay: Exactly. So even here, across the bay, you’ve got Machangulu, I think, where a lot of stars actually just land there by helicopter. You don’t even know that they’ve landed there, that they’ve been there for the weekend, and then they leave. So there’s lots of beautiful places here, but they are scarily expensive for most of the population in Mozambique.
That’s the gist of it.
Marcus: Yes. Rich, getting richer, et cetera, et cetera. But what’s interesting, from what you’ve been telling me on this episode, is I immediately thought, or initially thought, that South Africa, safari photography, yeah, I get it. But from what I’m hearing now, yeah, you’ve got weddings, yeah, okay, no surprise. But also, you’ve got a fiving commercial sector with magazines, high-end magazines, looking for high-end photographers. It all sounds rather perfect, actually.
Sam: You’re going to be joining us for next hour.
Marcus: I have come over. I am coming over.
Jay: So it is a thriving… So you’ve got two main magazines here at the moment. One is Indico and the other one is Shongila. They are basically competitors because they are targeting kind of the same markets. But one of them is directly connected to the airline, and the other one was connected to another airline, but then that airline lost its license here in Mozambique, so the magazine just continues, but they are doing really, really well. But that case is one of those where that magazine only has one photographer that they work with. He’s a partner of the magazine itself, so they don’t really work with a lot of other photographers. Every once in a while, they’ll feature something from someone else, but most of the time, they just tend to stick to that one photographer. I feel like it’s about time for us to start investing in the idea of creating one more magazine that might be of some interest of some kind. The problem is always how do you make that happen in terms of finances and logistics, because it does take a good chunk of money to have them printed, or if you go strictly digital, what your options are going to be. But I think it’s about time that something along the lines of the creative industry is due in Mozambique, and even for photography. I think it’s about time that something gets done, even if it’s just once every two months that something comes out, but that something actually gets done, and it is growing. The other one is the high-end one. The really high-end one is actually Portuguese production. They just come here, do the work, and then they take it back to Portugal, and then they print it and send it down to Mozambique. The other two are actually shot and produced and everything printed here in Mozambique. So it is a marketing area that is still growing and is still kind of opening up, and with the right strategy, the right funding and partnerships, I’m fairly sure that it’s a market that’s due for a good boom.
Sam: Perfect. Excellent. Well, that has been a really interesting show. It’s brilliant having somebody actually next to me, because they’re always remote. I think that did do one show just for me. I interviewed Robin Tonksen about IT at a show, but apart from that, it’s always remote, so it’s been amazing to have you here with me, Jay. It’s quite different doing when somebody’s next to you as opposed to at the other end of the screen. And listeners, we are now on YouTube, or should I say, watches, people can actually see us. So we are now on YouTube, so if you’re on YouTube, amazing. If you are listening to us on Spotify and Apple and everything else and you want to see what’s going on, go over to YouTube. We’ll put the links to our YouTube channel in the show notes. Go over, follow, we’d love to see you there.
Marcus: Fantastic.
Sam: Jay, thanks so much.
Jay: I’m the one who’s thankful for the invitation. So thank you, Marcus, and thank you, Sam, for the invitation. It’s been a good conversation, and I hope I get to meet Marcus when he has to pack his bags and his gear and come down to Muzambique.
Marcus: I am, mate. I’ll tell you what. The bags will be packed now. I’m just making sure my passport’s in date.
Jay: Perfect.
Marcus: I’m over next week.
Jay: Perfect. Thank you very much, Jay. Very enlightening. Thank you very much.
Sam: Marcus, I’ll see you next week.
Marcus: See you next week, Sam.
