Sérgio Santimano
  
 

Sergio Santimano
© Sérgio Santimano, self-portrait

  
"Returning to photograph post-war Mozambique was supposed to be about a fresh breath of air and a new stage in development in my country; it still is, but I'm deeply disturbed about some of the things that are going on in my country, like last year's brutal murder of Carlos Cardoso."
Sérgio Santimano
Sérgio Santimano of Goan (Indian) and African origins, was born LM, now Maputo in 1956, where his father was the administrator of the central hospital. He initiated his photographic career in 1982 at the 'Domingo' newspaper under Ricardo Rangel. From 1982 to 1983 he worked as anassistant in a Lisbon news agency. From 1983 to 1988, he produced and published relevant work for the national and international press, covering the war, famine, and political issues, at AIM.

In 1988 he moved with his Swedish wife to Sweden, where in 1989 he won a SIDA scholarship to document primary schools in war zones in Mozambique. In 1989 he started work in the photographic lab of a bio-medical centre in Uppsala, and from 1991 to 1993 he studied documentary photography near Stockholm. After Mozambique's General Peace Accord in 1992, he returned to Mozambique to shoot a study of the vestiges of war that follows the trail of a war amputee named Luísa Macuacua. The exhibition was shown internationally, and extracts from it were published in 'Revue Noire' and the prestigious Portuguese news magazine 'Grande Reportagem', for which he has been a collaborator and a regular contributor from 1992 to the present.

Since 1993 he has been a contributing member to Swedish photo bureau 'Bazaar/Phoenix', and he has had a number of exhibitions in Sweden. From 1993 to 1995 he freelanced in Mozambique for the United Nations and NGOs, covering demobilisation, demining, refugees, and educational and environmental issues. He is currently living in Maputo with assistance from the Swedish Institute for Development Assistance SIDA for the purpose of expressing his solidarity with and helping stimulate the renaissance of AMF.

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