Mario Cruz (Instagram) is a 31-year-old photographer based in Lisbon, Portugal. Starting in 2006, he worked with LUSA, a Portuguese news agency, and European Pressphoto Agency, before starting to work on his own personal projects more fully in 2012. “The talibes project appeared naturally,” he remembers:
Talibe is an Arabic term for disciple. In Senegal, what was once a respectable education system has become criminal. What tries to pass as religious teaching today has become a business for exploiting children
Living in the heart of Lisbon but very much on the periphery, this series documents the lives of people who have been forced to take shelter in seemingly abandoned buildings across the city
According to a Lisbon City Hall study, there are about 2,800 “partially unoccupied,” and over 1,800 “completely abandoned” buildings scattered across the city. Additionally, there are over 800 homeless people living in the streets.
Mario Cruz set out at the beginning of 2014 to work on a project he had put off for more than a year, portraying squatters who settled into abandoned factories and villas. He calls it “Roof.”
