“Perfect Darkness”: Foggy Nights and Melancholy Landscapes in Cinematic Photographs by Henri Prestes

The moody and melancholic aesthetic that pervades the work of Henri Prestes, a photographer and cinematographer based in Southern Europe, looks and feels exactly like a suspense film… You can almost hear music as you look at them.

Shooting at night or at dawn in small villages around Portugal, Prestes’ cinematographic eye misses nothing. Even the most banal scenes — a winding country road, dimly-lit front porches — are transformed into forbidding and mysterious landscapes. He shoots regardless of the weather, using snow, fog, or rain to his favor.

“Visually, I feel it’s easier to create the mood or atmosphere that I’m looking for my pictures in these kinds of settings,” he says.

Bathed in artificial or ambient light, Prestes’ enigmatic visual narratives are proof that there are stories, everywhere, just waiting to be told…. if you know where to look for them.

More: Henri Prestes, Instagram, Behance