Obrigado amigo - a tribute to photographer Nuno Laranjeira
By Sean Lawless on 8th Apr 24
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Nuno Laranjeira, who died at the beginning of April, was one of the most gifted trials/motocross/enduro/rally/wedding photographers of his generation. While technically brilliant, his true genius lay in his eye for composition – the ability to see a shot that no-one else could, to frame an image whether action or static in a way that simply wouldn’t occur to anyone else. He was an artist who happened to choose photography as his medium.
Over the last couple of years he had taken a step back from work to return home to Portugal to look after his elderly parents and it was while he was there he was first diagnosed with a particularly aggressive type of melanoma. He died aged 52 from complications following an operation. I’d like to think he simply didn’t wake up.
I was lucky to work with Nuno for the best part of 20 years, initially through DBR and then with the Red Bull Pro Nationals and Arenacross before we joined forces as freelancers to collaborate on magazine features and handle the media for teams including REVO Husqvarna and Buildbase Honda.
His painstaking search for perfection came at a cost. For Nuno deadlines tended to be a loose concept, an abstract jumble of times and dates rather than the absolute line in the sand they should be in publishing. Even when he took my wedding pictures, he made my soon-to-be wife Louise so late after fannying about with photographs at her hotel that the ceremony came within five minutes of being cancelled.
Having spent most of his working life driving thousands of miles across Europe shooting for – among others – the FIM and Monster Energy, he’d studied YouTube masterclasses by truck drivers on how to relieve himself on the move. As a result, whenever he’d rock up at my house he would unload a winebox the size of a small fridge that he’d picked up in Calais, a catering pack of piri-piri sauce and a couple of screw-top bottles that were most definitely off-limits.
At times Nuno struggled with his mental health. He once told me he felt that, as a nation, there is a fine seam of darkness that runs through the Portuguese and on occasions he certainly had to work hard to keep his own black dog on a lead. However, in my house we will always remember him as a funny, caring, passionate man who hated injustice and who was full to the brim with compassion for others. He was part of the family and we all loved the bones of him.
Nuno knew he was dying but only revealed how serious his condition was a few months ago. Full of dark humour right up until the end, on our last Skype call he motioned towards the room where his parents were watching TV, saying “it’s like a f**king competition here to see which one of us dies first!”.
Obrigado amigo.
