In August 2020, in the middle of a pandemic, journalist and photographer Ricardo Martins packed his bags and his photographic equipment and traveled to Serra da Mantiqueira, in Minas Gerais, to record the specialty coffee plantations.
After two months on the road, having passed by 13 cities and 20 specialty coffee farms, he managed to produce enough material for the book, as well as audiovisual and interactive materials attached to the work.
“I fell in love with specialty coffees and, above all, with producers in the Cristina region. The trip was so inspiring that I already consider myself passionate about it. I even bought a kettle and various other materials. I confess that, when I started this job, I didn’t even know what a specialty coffee was,” he says.
The book Cafés da Mantiqueira is available for sale in good bookstores and at the photographer’s website, ricardomartins.org, This is the tenth book of Ricardo Martins career, which was already awarded a Jabuti in 2012 for the book “A Riqueza de um Vale”.
In parallel to the book edition, an 8-episode TV series was produced by RM produções and directed by Fábio Tanaka, bringing the backstage of Ricardo’s photographs.
Concerning the video footage and photos finished for the book and series, the original idea was to make the work interactive, adding up QR codes in the photographs so that one could access the making of and visualize what took place behind the photo, moments, characters, interesting places of the trip around the coffee plantations of Serra da Mantiqueira, as well as the unique aspects of Ricardo’s work and his vision of photography. The QR codes in the book will also be a way to access the soundtrack, exclusively created by musicians André Ferro and Flávio Bituka to the series. The 12 tracks set the ambiance in a unique and characteristic manner.
