To tell you a bit about me…. My name is José Manuel Pires Dias, I am Portuguese and came to France in 1967 with my parents when I was three and a half years old. I am 57 years old and I live in Bretteville sur Laize in Normandy near the city of Caen.
It’s like a blank page if I have to sum up my journey so far. Constantly getting back to work. The book must be really fun, many of us here make a living from this photographic work, and I take my hat off to them.
For me photography is a hobby, emotion, pleasure, sharing, exchange, discussions, conviviality, but above all laughter and tears. Photography is, you all know it, trying to capture a fleeting moment in our life, it is not that simple, because it goes so quickly … Our existence goes so quickly here, we have to take advantage of those moments when our eye sees things and land. Think about it all. We all have a more or less interesting personality, endearing, fascinating, honest, loyal, generous, detestable too. I find myself in all of this, that’s what makes us different and fortunately that’s how it is. This is also photography… The difference.
To talk about my photographic subjects, obviously I put the emphasis on humanist photos, but I photograph all types of subjects, I don’t have any preferences.
To come back to me, I started photography in the 1990s with a Canon EFM camera, fully manual, no autofocus … This is for old people !! I took photographs the way my father did, who had a certain gift for framing, thank you Dad!
Then 5 years later, linked to my professional career, I came to live in Normandy, near Caen, and I joined the Cormelles le Royal photo club, I put my hands in the Rodinal, the D76 and the ‘ID11. I ate it from the film lab and from the evenings where I managed to shoot only one photo, or even none. This beautiful occupation took me about 10 years, but I still do it regularly, the first love always does that.
Then in the years 2002, I joined a very small collective, a federated photo club, the Images club of St Aignan de Cramesnil, there I lived my most beautiful photographic memories, not only by photography but especially by exchanges and our victories in the Coupe de France, thank you to all these people that I worked with and that I continue to see….
My photographic titles: Mfiap – Efiap/b – Ambassador of the FPF and MFPF and finally GPU CR2
