Apu Gomes (2025)

04/11/2025

I’m excited to share that the gallery is now open! After two decades behind the lens, I’m opening this new space to share the stories that have shaped my gaze. It’s a curated selection of images now available as limited-edition prints. Each photograph carries a fragment of time, an encounter with people, places, and light that changed the way I see the world.

Printed on museum-quality paper with professional craftsmanship, every piece is produced on demand and handled with the same care I bring to each frame in the field. This new gallery is more than a shop; it’s a continuation of my storytelling, a way for these images to live beyond the screen and find new homes.

✨Explore the collection, choose the piece that speaks to you, and bring home a moment that remains. RAW and REAL.
Link in bio

30/10/2025

I’m so happy to share that my new website is live!

This site is more than a portfolio. It’s a space built around stories that reveal encounters with places, people and moments that have shaped my gaze over the years, witnessing the transformation of the world, the transition from shooting film to digital, and now the arrival of generated images with artificial intelligence.

In an age where images can be generated, altered, or fabricated in seconds, photojournalism stands as one of the last frontiers of truth. It’s not only about capturing what happens, it’s about being there, witnessing, and translating reality through a human lens.

As a photojournalist, my images preserve the authenticity of experience. They carry the weight of presence, the sound, emotion, and humanity behind each frame, something that AI cannot replicate. As technology blurs the boundaries between real and synthetic, the ethical commitment, credibility, and empathy of photojournalists become even more vital.

In times of artificial intelligence, my images remind us that truth still has a face, and someone was there witnessing. Listening. Presence. Raw and Real!

✨Explore the new series on my website. Moments from twenty years behind the lens, gathered together for the first time!

28/10/2025

This is me.
42 years of sun on my face this October 30th; 20 years of photography in my life, and a deep, constant desire to keep learning and growing.

A portrait felt like a good way to start this new chapter, since this account isn’t really about me, but about my observations and documentation of the world around me.

I started my career two decades ago, shooting film and witnessing the transition to digital. 20 years behind the lens, documenting people and places that have shaped how I see the world. From the streets of São Paulo to the deserts of Libya, or at the US-Mexico border, in the Amazon rainforest, in Paris or Tehran, and beyond. I’m deeply grateful for this gift and the chance to share it. Every assignment goes far beyond the pictures that get published; each has been a journey through humanity in its RAWest and most REAL form.

To mark this milestone, I’m launching my new website “Apu Gomes, raw and real”, a space to share the stories I’ve been telling through my camera over the years, and a gallery with a selection of previously unpublished, limited-edition prints.

My work has been featured in National Geographic, TIME Magazine, The New York Times, Folha de S.Paulo, CNN, Globo TV, Getty Images, BBC News, and other major outlets. As a filmmaker, I directed Guardians of the Amazon, about the Waiapi people defending their territory and traditions in the rainforest. I also filmed interviews with the legendary music producer Humberto Gatica in Los Angeles for the acclaimed documentary Elis & Tom: It Had to Be You, and with Mariah Carey for Fantastico, Show da Vida among others. And now I’m happy to share these images and stories here on Instagram, also on my NEW website, and someday, at your home.

Throughout these 20 years, I still believe in what first drew me to photography: that stories have the power to connect us, move us, and remind us of what we share, in their purest from: Raw and Real!

✨ Explore some of the published and unpublished stories, images, and moments that shaped this journey! Link in bio

Portraits by Alice Bayao, Kway Sensei, Damian Dovarganes and Yasuyoshi Chiba.

23/07/2025

Happy to invite you to join me and others photographers friends for the group exhibition “Made in LA 5” .gallery , that it’s going down this Saturday, July 26th in Los Angeles, California.

I’ll be to meet and greet! Come through, I’d love to see you there, join us for a night of photos, art, food and music!
80 artists + 14 vendors

8pm-1am in Boyle Heights
📍 3501 Union Pacific
Los Angeles, CA

19/06/2025

Published photos from last week’s protests in Los Angeles for

14/06/2025

Photo of the week by #
California Highway Patrol officers arrest a demonstrator in the overpass of the 101 Freeway as protests continue in response to federal immigration operations in Los Angeles on 10 June, 2025. 📷 Apu GOMES

12/06/2025

Published photos of the Los Angeles protest for

27/05/2025

Last week, the world lost Sebastião Salgado at 81 years old. He was one of the greatest, if not the greatest photographer of our time. I feel I’ve lost a friend, someone who inspired me and profoundly influenced my career, as well as the careers of photographers across generations.

When I was in the school, I saw a photo in an old magazine of the dispute between gold mine workers and military police; that picture stayed with me. Years later, while studying photojournalism at , I was formally introduced to Salgado’s work by one of my mentors, João Bittar He told us about the time Salgado was working with the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper team on his “Workers” project, and also showed us his powerful images from Africa and the Serra Pelada gold mine in Brazil. Those images overwhelmed me. From that moment, I knew exactly what kind of photographer I wanted to become.

After finishing my studies and just as I was starting my career as a photojournalist, my late friend Paulo Bravos and told me about a new gold rush happening in the Amazon. Inspired by Salgado’s photographs of Serra Pelada, I set out on my first independent trip to the rainforest to document a gold mine there.

Later, I was hired as a staff photographer for Folha de S.Paulo. One day, while I was working, Sebastião came by to speak with and the newspaper’s photo team about his upcoming project, “Genesis.” I was lucky enough to be there with them.

After moving to California, I saw his TED Talk in Long Beach. Once again, his work deeply inspired me, and I decided to return to Brazil to work with Indigenous communities. In 2022, he came to the opening of his exhibition Amazônia in Los Angeles, and I had the chance to speak with him again. My friend took a photo of us together. Sebastião was incredibly kind. He went out of his way to introduce me to his wife, Lélia, telling her that I had worked for Folha and was now working with Indigenous peoples in Brazil. We exchanged contacts,

CONTINUE in the COMMENTS…

13/05/2025

It’s amazing how one event can unlock a flood of memories.

The recent passing of Pope Francis sent me down memory lane, digging through my photo archives to find images from his 2013 visit to Aparecida, Brazil — and even earlier ones of Pope Benedict XVI during his 2007 visit to São Paulo.

But what truly stopped me was the memory of my very first assignment as a photojournalist: coincidentally, it was also a Pope passing by — John Paul II, on April 2, 2005. I was just starting out, called in by the local news agency, now-defunct Futura Press to photograph the moment at a church near my neighborhood in São Paulo, Brazil.

My life as a photographer is flying by. I began working as a photojournalist 20 years ago, in 2005. And like every young photographer, I wasn’t sure about anything! I questioned every photo I took — was it interesting or not? Were the pictures good enough? Was I on the right path, or completely lost? These doubts have followed me throughout my journey, and honestly, I think they still do.

Just last week, after a shoot, I returned to the studio and a friend asked me, “Were the photos good?” I replied, “I think so… let’s wait and see what the editor says.” But then I began editing — finding a little something here, another detail there — and in the end, I had an amazing story.

27/04/2025

The reggae legends “The Wailers” ( ) brought the vibes to in Venice, California on their first show of the 2025 Tour to commemorate the 30th anniversary of “Natural Mystic: The Legend Lives On”. The spirit of the music, still strong, still rising!!!!
Thank you .astonbarrett and for making me part of it. 🇯🇲🇧🇷📷

25/04/2025

Working as a photojournalist, I had the honor of photographing two popes during their visits to Brazil — Benedict XVI in São Paulo (2007) and Francis in Aparecida (2013).

After Benedict stepped down due to his advanced age and health, Francis — the first Latin American and Jesuit pope — stepped in, bringing a very different energy and reviewing the images I captured of both we can notice how distinct their were from each others.
Benedict felt like distant, always surrounded by security, moving in bulletproof popemobile and in a luxurious Mercedes-Benz also bulletproof.
Francis was the opposite — he was riding in a open popemobile, he looked like warm, always smiling, making physical and eye contact with people, including this person who writes this text :)

Pope Francis jesuit background shone through his work and attitude in general about how we should treat each others, and I’ll always carry the memory of this chapter I got to witness and am happy to share with you

Now, the Vatican starts to prepare for another conclave to elect Francis’ successor.

21/04/2025

Today I woke up with the sad news that the Saint Father, Pope Francis died this Easter Monday, April 21, 2025. He was 88.
I first saw him in 2013, during his inaugural papal trip outside Rome—World Youth Day in Brazil. I was on assignment then, a staff photographer for , sent to the National Shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida with a team of trusted colleagues: .varella and . We split angles inside the great church. My post was near the altar. As the Pope entered, I lowered my camera to take him in—not through a lens, but with my own eyes. I smiled. He smiled back.
It was a small moment, but it filled me. Like grace.

As a Jesuit pope, Francis made clear that a fundamental task of the faithful is not so much to follow rules but to discern what God is calling them to do. So, I would like to share the begining and the end of his last message to the World in the last appearance he made to the public from the balcony of St. Peter’s basilica to address the crowd yesterday on Easter Sunday.

**continue in the comments **

Apu Gomes

04/11/2025

30/10/2025

28/10/2025

23/07/2025

19/06/2025

14/06/2025

12/06/2025

27/05/2025

13/05/2025

27/04/2025

25/04/2025

21/04/2025

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