Saudade is a word that holds profound emotional complexity. It embodies longing, nostalgia, and melancholy, yet it resists direct translation. It’s a feeling that is both positive and negative, a deep ache for something lost, but also a treasure for having experienced it. With this project, my goal was to visually communicate the layered emotions of saudade, showing how it feels to me personally, as the experience of it is deeply subjective.

Ultimately, this book is not an attempt to define saudade. Instead, it seeks to evoke its essence, both personally and universally. By layering blurred images, fragments of memory, and elements of time’s decay, the book invites the viewer to experience saudade as an emotional state that transcends language.