João Paulo Santos, 60 years old, has been a TVDE driver in Lisbon for nine years. During his trips, he accumulated photographs of places and moments captured with his phone, something he never considered himself capable of doing professionally. When Bolt launched a challenge to its drivers to document Portugal through their eyes, he submitted some of these images, which are now part of a photography exhibition inaugurated on September 11 at the Palavra de Viajante bookstore on Rua de São Bento in Lisbon.
Bolt received 58 submissions for this project, which seeks to capture the city through people who spend hours traveling through the streets without knowing where their next trip will take them. Mário de Morais, Bolt's general director in Portugal, argues that this point of view is interesting because it allows one to experience the city in an unexpected way. The exhibition is described as being about "the small story within the big story of the city," with photographs from across the country.
João Paulo drives an eight-seater vehicle and frequently works in tourist zones and central areas of Lisbon. His workdays last between six and eight hours, sometimes reaching ten. When asked what he likes most about the profession, he mentions the contact with people. Over the years, he remembers transporting a pregnant woman with the first signs of labor, already prepared and with her bag packed to go to the hospital to have the baby.
According to Mário de Morais, the goal of the exhibition is to make the relationship between drivers and users more human. Although he does not acknowledge that these relationships are generally bad, the Bolt representative argues that most interactions already go well and that negative cases are more visible. For João Paulo, seeing his everyday photographs included in an exhibition was something unexpected.
