Teresina Through the Lens: A Photographer's Chaotic Love Affair

so here i am, sprawled on a sticky plastic chair in teresina, brazil, camera case bleeding onto the floor like a wound. last night's shoot for that terrible beer commercial left my back screaming, but the humidity's got me feeling like i'm wrapped in wet paper towels-*26.69 feels like degrees they said, whatever the hell that means. checked the weather app and it's...basically soup outside right now, hope you brought deodorant. humidity's thicker than cheap beer foam, and my gear is fogging like a bathroom mirror after a shower.

this place has this weird energy-like someone crammed a desert, a river, and a chaotic street market into a pressure cooker. piaba river slinks through town like a lazy anaconda, and the city lights at night look like someone spilled a bag of glitter on black velvet. if you get bored, parnaíba and timon are practically next door, but honestly? they just look like teresina with cheaper street food.

“don’t eat the açaí bowls near the bus station,” a dreadlocked guy with a missing tooth warned me while adjusting his guitar. “they use tap water. your stomach will become a carnival ride.”

got talking to this woman named ana at a food stall. she swore the best tapioca in the whole damn state was hidden in a grocery store called ‘mercado do carlos’-no sign, just a blue door near the pharmacy. i found it. she wasn’t lying. tapioca’s like eating clouds stuffed with cheese, but somehow way better.

someone told me the museu de arte piauí is actually just a guy’s apartment with framed sketches of his neighbor’s cat. i went anyway-solid advice. the cat is surprisingly expressive. also heard that the parque zoobotânico loses monkeys during festivals. they escape to eat festival pastries. no joke, saw three photos on yelp of monkeys stealing coxinhas. check it out here.

“if you shoot portraits, avoid the ‘golden hour’,” a local photographer grunted while fiddling with his lens. “it’s more like ‘mosquito hour’ here. bring bug spray that melts plastic.”

pressure’s at 1013 mb, which my meteorologist friend translates to “weather that won’t kill you, but might make you wish it would.” my camera gear’s been acting up-fogged lens, sticky buttons-probably from the humidity. tried to shoot the serra da capivara national park yesterday. the drive was worse than the photos. tripadvisor says it’s worth it though.

found this tiny café called cozinha da vó* that serves tapioca so good it made me question my life choices. they’ve got a mural on the wall that looks like it was painted by a three-year-old after eating too much candy. yelp review called it “artistic diarrhea.” i disagree. it’s chaotic genius.

so yeah, teresina’s a mess. sticky, humid, full of questionable food advice and monkeys with sugar cravings. but my camera’s full of it-every frame feels like capturing lightning in a bottle, if the bottle was sweating and leaking. wouldn’t trade it.

p.s. if you go, bring a lens cloth and a machete. for the humidity and the tapioca lines, respectively.

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