Luis Basto

Self Portrait, 2000

Black and White Photography

Luís (Pedro) Basto was born in 1969 in LM, now Maputo. Luís Basto grew up in the provinces of Sofala and Zambézia in north central Mozambique, the son of a director of nationalised tea plantations in newly-independent Mozambique before the civil war made the area uninhabitable. As his interest in photography developed, he recycled his father’s old darkroom and learned to print black and white and Cibachrome images by hand. A self-taught photographer, his early work was influenced by Ricardo Rangel and the school of Mozambican photography. Luís Basto is a freelance photographer, painter and plastic artist, and he is married to an artist from Zimbabwe. He divides his time between Harare and Maputo.

“These images were partly inspired by the campaign against HIV and AIDS and may be regarded as part of my documentation, in a creative style, of urbanisation and the informal sector in Africa, its inhabitants and their relation with urban space.”
Luís Basto