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Apu Gomes - Raw and Real

@apugallery

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Selected fineart prints and more by @apugomes
Stories of a world raw and real 🌎

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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 taken in Venice, California by @apugallery

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a year ago

I’m so happy to share that my new website is live, raw and real!

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! taken in Venice, California by @apugallery

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a year ago

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. taken in Venice, California by @apugallery

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a year ago

Before the current war and rising tensions, I photographed Ashura in Iran. Looking at these images now, they feel heavier, more immediate, and more connected to the present.

For Shia Muslims, Ashura marks the death of Husayn ibn Ali, who is remembered for standing up against injustice, no matter the cost. In Iran, that story is not just history, it lives in the rhythm of the processions, in the grief, and in the unity shared by thousands in the streets.

During my time there, I was working in a *restricted environment*: limited access, constant awareness, every frame carefully considered. But even within those boundaries, what stood out most was the humanity. Strangers offering food and tea, people moving together in mourning, and a deep sense of collective memory that needed no translation.

Now, with Iran at the center of global tension, I see these moments differently. What I witnessed was more than a religious observance, it was a reflection of resilience, identity, and the enduring act of standing firm in the face of uncertainty.

These images were made in another moment in time, but they echo something that feels deeply relevant now.

Sometimes photographs do more than document the past, they quietly speak to the present.

✨ Explore some of the published and unpublished stories, images, and moments RAW and REAL.
Link in bio

#Tehran #Iran #ApuGomes #ApuGallery #canonteam @canonusa @canonbr taken in Tehran, Iran by @apugallery

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6 months ago

In 2013, the world’s attention was also focused on Iran.

In the same week that I arrived in Tehran, newspaper in the city had their headlines talking about diplomats from Iran and the five world powers, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia and China, were gathered in Geneva negotiating the future of Iran’s nuclear program. But while the world watched the negotiations, my camera was focused on the streets. On ordinary life unfolding in Tehran!

Between traffic and tea houses, parks and crowded sidewalks, the city moving at its own rhythm. People walking to work, students gathering in cafés, families sharing time together in public spaces. In the middle of global headlines, daily life continued with a quiet resilience.

These photographs are not about geopolitics.
They are about people.

About the small gestures and fleeting moments that rarely appear in the news, but define the real texture of a place.

Tehran, Iran, 2013.

✨ Explore some of the published and unpublished stories, images, and moments RAW and REAL.
Link in bio

#Tehran #Iran #ApuGomes #ApuGallery #canonteam @canonusa @canonbr taken in Tehran, Iran by @apugallery

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7 months ago

In 2013, I traveled to Iran, a country often in international headlines, yet little known by most people. After receiving rare permission to photograph Tehran, my dear friend and former international news partner, @adghirni , and I produced a series of stories documenting life in this massive capital of over 12 million people.

These images show a city alive, buzzing bazaars, everyday moments, and people simply living their lives. But today, more than a decade later, Iran is once again at a historic crossroads.

Since late December 2025, Iranians across the country have taken to the streets in what has become the largest wave of protests since the 1979 Revolution, driven by a deep economic crisis, runaway inflation, the collapse of the rial, and demands for fundamental political change and dignity. People have been killed, hundreds of thousands injured, and many more arrested in a brutal crackdown by security forces. The government has also imposed near-total internet blackouts to suppress communication and hide what’s happening on the ground.

Looking back at these photos now, I’m reminded that behind every headline and geopolitical narrative are real people, their daily lives, their hopes, their struggles. What I saw in Tehran in 2013 was not a monolith, but a city full of stories. Today, Iranians are writing a new and painful chapter in their history, challenging the world to see beyond the headlines and recognize their courage, resilience, and longing for change.

✨ Explore some of the published and unpublished stories, images, and moments RAW and REAL.
Link in bio

#Tehran #Iran #DocumentaryPhotography #PhotoJournalism #HistoryInTheMaking ApuGomes ApuGallery taken in Tehran, Iran by @apugallery

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8 months ago

A look back at my most powerful work from 2025 💫

✨More from this ongoing raw and real archive, including unpublished images and fine art prints, lives on my new website. Link in bio

Thank you lovely Apu Gallery Raw and Real team 🖤
Director @apugomes
Director Executive @gutodelima
Art Director @buiafronza
Web engineer @joma_s
Video editor @joaojrvideoeditor
Photos and Videos by @apugomes
Thanks to our partners at #creativehub.io

#recap2025 #apugomes @canonusa #canonteam #canon canonusa taken in Los Angeles, California by @apugallery

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9 months ago

When we tell a story, everything seems to happen fast. Like the pieces fall into place. But life isn’t a puzzle. It’s messier than that.

I never imagined starting 2025 photographing the largest fire in the history of Los Angeles, unfolding just miles from where I live. Or ending the year documenting a record rainfall in Southern California.

It was a year of contrasts.
A lunar eclipse, and blood moon rising in the sky. Days spent with the skate community of Dogtown, followed by intense coverage of protests in LA, sparked by immigration raids.
Moments of tension, and moments of grace.

In Yosemite, I felt closer to something older, it was a reminder of nature’s scale and patience.
And I could never have guessed I would meet Ziggy Marley and Aston Barrett Jr., or be invited to photograph The Wailers during the first show of their 2025 international tour. Or see Racionais MC’s performing in Los Angeles, and be back inside a studio with Mano Brown in LA, continuing a story we began years ago in São Paulo.

As a documentary photographer, I’m drawn to real moments and real people, and I can tell you that my pictures represent the place that I was in.
No Photoshop. Nothing added. Nothing removed. It’s a reflection of the world that I witnessed it.

I know it’s impossible to be completely fair. There are details I can’t, and sometimes don’t want to explain. But writing this now, and making these images, helps me slow down. And it seems easier to understand the life.

These photographs are fragments of a longer journey. Some were published. Some were personal. All of them belong to a body of work built over time.

✨More from this ongoing raw and real archive, including unpublished images and fine art prints, lives on my new website. Link in bio taken in Venice, California by @apugallery

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9 months ago

This image is part of the Yosemite series.
Its a series inspired by the history of the Ahwahnechee people, who lived in the Yosemite valley long before the Gold Rush, and reminds me the Gold Rush the Amazon, where Indigenous communities were and still facing pressures not unlike those that once reshaped this land. And also inspired by individuals like Ansel Adams that used his art to further inspire appreciation for Yosemite and support for its preservation.

✨Available in store in a limited edition. Explore the collection, choose the piece that speaks to you, and bring home a moment that last forever. RAW and REAL.
Link in bio taken in Yosemite National Park, California by @apugallery

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10 months ago

I’m excited to share that my new website is launching soon! It’s been thoughtfully designed to better reflect my work and make it easier for you to connect with what I do. Stay tuned—I can’t wait to show you what’s coming.

Link in Bio

#fineart #fineartprint #photojournalism #photography #documentary #nature #natureza #canon #canonusa #LosAngeles #California #ApuGomes #Apugallery by @apugallery

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a year ago

📷 @apugomes #tbt of the First Sunrise of 2023.
January 01, 2023 Venice Beach, California.
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#VeniceBeach #LosAngeles #California #Beach #2023 #firstweek #photography #fotografia #Canon #CanonUSA #canongallery #canon5dmarkiv #Love #Beach @canonusa #Arfocsp @arfocsp #amazing #bevisuallyinspired #fubiz @fubiz @bviral @thecoolhunter_ @iwanttoleaveok @instagram #Art #Inspiration #everydaylosangeles #Photojournalism #ApuGomes @apugallery taken in Venice, California by @apugallery

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4 years ago

When it rains 🌧 Venice Beach, California, November 2022.
📷 @apugomes
Prints available at LINK ON BIO
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#venice #venicebeach #losangeles #california #rainbow #palmtrees #water #fineart #nightshot #rain #amazingplaces #california #californialove #fubiz @fubiz #discoverglobe #veniceskatepark #landscapephotography #losangelesart #amazing #artofvisuals #bevisuallyinspired #aov #earthaffinity #Canon #CanonTeam @canonusa #ApuGomes @apugallery taken in Venice Beach, California by @apugallery

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4 years ago