Fotografica

Across the street from casa de Mauro e Odelva is Foto Murakami a photography business run by a couple going back 25 years to when Patricia was a young girl. Although this is primarily a residental street and area, every third or fourth building houses a small family business, essentailly in its street level garage.

At our home in Saint Paul, we have portraits taken of Patricia and Henrique when they were children by Murakami. Senhor Murakami is Japanese and Lubelia, his wife, is from Portugal. While Patricia is having her hair done, basically a two to three hour process of going to a private residence rather than a salon, I am left to try to fend for myself. I go directly for Murakami Foto, thinking of course, that we share the language of photography and digital gear.

In our broken form of communication, Lubelia speaks little English and I speak even less pouco Portuguese, she was able to tell me a few things about their photography business. Shops like these are peppered all over the residental high streets of São Paulo. First, Foto Murakami is now completely digital. Senhor Murakami uses a Nikon and Lubelia owns a 10.1 megapixel Canon Digital Rebel. Surprisingly, words like megapixel and Digital Rebel are common across cultures.

I am also able to ascertain, without English translation, that the Murakami´s are also videographers and do a good business in passport and mandatory military registration fotos. Lubelia is adament in telling me she uses mini-DVD format for video and not VHS, even though they sell VHS tapes in the store.

Odelva is able to tell them I work with photography for a revista (magazine) in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

"Mini-so-dah" Senhor Murakami and his wife Lubelia repeat over and over, "Mini-so-dah" as if they are amazed there is such a word in any language.