I look with more silence than most people do
Brix's grandfather abandoned circus performance to become a photographer, establishing a creative legacy that shaped the photographer's childhood and artistic vision. After formal training in Porto, Brix developed a travel-photograph-exhibit cycle, winning the 2015 Gazeta Prize for his North Atlantic cod fishing reportage.
- Grandfather abandoned circus performance to become a photographer in Santa Maria
- Completed professional photography training in Porto in 2005
- Won 2015 Gazeta Prize for North Atlantic cod fishing reportage
- Maintains 10-year collaboration with National Geographic Portugal
- Current exhibition touring Azores, mainland Portugal, and Madeira through 2027
Pepe Brix, a Santa Maria-based photographer, traces his artistic journey from his grandfather's circus-to-camera pivot through a decade-long National Geographic collaboration, driven by human connection and documentary storytelling.
Pepe Brix grew up in Santa Maria, one of the Azores islands, surrounded by the echoes of a family that had traded the circus tent for the camera. His grandfather had been a circus performer—had traveled the country with acrobats and spectacle—before arriving in the islands and deciding to stay. One day the grandfather made a choice that would ripple through generations: he sold his stake in the circus and bought a camera. He became a photographer. That decision, Brix says, placed him exactly where he stands today.
His childhood was loud with music and movement. His father, Max Brix Elisabeth, was a sociable man who loved music. His brother loved it too. By thirteen or fourteen, Pepe was in punk bands, playing community venues with friends who filled the rehearsal spaces and concerts. He ran track and played sports. He roamed Santa Maria's streets without worry, playing until late into the night. The island felt safe, boundless, a place where a child could become himself without constraint. All of this—the group dynamics, the sound, the freedom—fed his creativity in ways he is still unpacking.
When it came time to choose a school track at sixteen, he picked science instead of arts. He was uncertain what his life would become. But he was already photographing. He had already felt the pull of it. The question was whether it could be a career or merely a passion. He stood with one foot in psychology, one foot in photography, until he enrolled in a professional photography program at an institute in Porto. Even then, he was working with his father at Fotopepe, their family studio, covering events across the island and learning to see with a documentary eye.
His grandfather's archive became a teacher. Thousands of photographs of Santa Maria's rural life, images from the 1940s and 50s and 70s, documented a world that had already begun to vanish. By his late teens, Brix understood the power of what his grandfather had preserved—the way a photograph could help a place reinterpret itself, could hold what was slipping away. During his course, he made a decision that felt less like a choice and more like a recognition: he would be a photographer. After graduating in 2005, he traveled to Poland on an exchange program, camera in hand. The following year he took his first solo interrail journey across Europe. The photographs from that trip became his first exhibition, shown at a gallery called Arco 8. From that point forward, a rhythm established itself: travel, photograph, return to the island, edit, write, exhibit. The pattern felt natural. The journeys sharpened his purpose.
In 2010, his father died. The following year, Brix spent months in India and Nepal, photographing. He returned and published a book with Daniel Gonçalves called "Essay on the Length of Silence," traveling the country to present it. During this period, a conversation with a friend named Henrique Ramos—who manages fishing observers for Portuguese cod operations in the Northwest Atlantic—sparked an idea. Brix would embed on a fishing vessel and document contemporary cod fishing. He spent three and a half months aboard the Joana Princesa, working and writing at sea. When he returned to land, he sent an email to Gonçalo Pereira Rosa, director of National Geographic Portugal. That email began a collaboration that has now lasted a decade.
The cod fishing reportage won the 2015 Gazeta Prize, though the announcement came with an absurd moment of confusion—the judges initially named the wrong work, then called back to apologize and confirm his was the winner. He had never competed in a photography contest before and has not competed in one since. Prizes motivate some people, he says, but what truly drives him is different: the chance to discover a community, to meet people, to build relationships with them so he can tell their story. That human dimension is what sustains him.
When asked which of his works has marked him most deeply, he says all of them. Each project changes him, adds something he cannot extract from any other. India marked him. The cod fishing marked him. They are entirely different experiences, and that is the beauty of his work—he never absorbs the same thing twice. When asked what he sees through his lens that others do not, he pauses. He does not think he sees more than anyone else. He simply dedicates more time. He tries to quiet the noise that surrounds us, the static that obscures detail. He looks with more silence.
His current exhibition, "10 Years of Stories in Photography," runs at the Santa Maria Museum through the end of December, then travels to the other Azores islands in 2026 and to mainland Portugal and Madeira in 2027. He is finishing a documentary on deep-sea research called "Half a Mile Down" for Portuguese public television. In 2025 and 2026, he is focused on a major project for the Directorate-General of the Arts—a photographic survey of Portuguese artisanal crafts for a national repository. When asked what projects he still wants to pursue, he laughs. In recent years, the work has come to him. He follows what appears, and that fluidity, that harmony between what he seeks and what finds him, has been deeply gratifying.
Citas Notables
My grandfather sold his stake in the circus and bought a camera. That decision placed me exactly where I stand today.— Pepe Brix
What truly motivates me is discovering a community, knowing new people, building relationships with them so I can tell their story. That human dimension is everything.— Pepe Brix
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Your grandfather left the circus for a camera. That's an unusual pivot. Did he know something about photography that made it worth abandoning that life?
I think he understood that the circus was a way of moving through the world, of witnessing it. The camera was another way to do the same thing—to hold what you see, to preserve it. He stayed in Santa Maria. He built a life there. I think he saw that the island itself was worth documenting.
You grew up surrounded by music and movement and freedom. How much of that childhood is still in the way you work?
All of it. The group dynamics, the sense that creativity happens when people are together—that's still how I approach a story. I'm not trying to capture something in isolation. I'm trying to understand a community, the relationships, the bonds. That comes directly from those punk bands, those nights on the street.
You chose science over arts in school, even though you were already photographing. Were you hedging your bets?
I was uncertain. Photography felt like a passion, but I didn't know if it could sustain a life. It took time to understand that it could. The uncertainty was real, but it also meant I was paying attention—learning from my father's work, from my grandfather's archive. When I finally committed, it was because I had already seen what photography could do.
Your grandfather's photographs of rural Santa Maria became a kind of map for you. What were you looking for in those images?
I was looking at what had already changed. Santa Maria in the 1940s and 50s was not the same island anymore by the time I was a teenager. His photographs showed me that documentation has power—that you can hold a moment and let others understand what was lost, what transformed. That's when I knew photography was what I wanted to do.
You've been with National Geographic for a decade now. What keeps you coming back?
It's not really about the magazine. It's about the work itself—the chance to spend months with people, to understand their lives, to tell their stories with care. The cod fishermen, the communities I've documented—those relationships are what matter. The publication is just the vessel.
You say you look with more silence. What does that mean?
It means I try to step back from the noise, the assumptions, the things that distract us. Most people see the same things I see. But they're moving through the world quickly. I'm trying to slow down, to notice what's actually there beneath the surface. That's not a special gift. It's just patience.