9 Gorgeously Violent Images From Nazaré Yesterday

Here’s a few captures from our man on the ground in Portugal, vagabond lensman Joao Bracourt, who bolted north from his home near Sagres, to get an angle on what ended up being one of Nazare’s biggest days in recent memory, maybe ever. 

“Caught a bus to Lisbon at 

1am

, then a ride to Nazaré from good friend Hélio Valentim,” Joao tells 

Stab.

 “Didn´t sleep at all, didn’t care. The forescast looked amazing. Alex Botelho had just told me that Hugo Vau caught the biggest wave ever at Praia do Norte, and the next day looked promising.

Ross Clarke Jones, Benjamin Sanchis, Axi Munian and Sebastian Steudtner, etc were also on it. Its been about half a dozen huge swells I have photographed here, and this was one of the biggest for sure. The antecipation is always huge, the surfers put on their gear before dawn at the harbour… 

Sebastian got a bomb, drew a nice line, and Benjamin got one so long that made it look like a pointbreak. My camera and lens are full of salt water. My throat aches. It is business as usual.”

Scroll through a few shits in the gallery above, and head south for some violent empties, accompanied by Portuguese heteronymous poet, Fernando Pessoa’s “Odes.”

1.
Of the gardens of Adonis, Lydia, I love
Most of all those fugitive roses
That on the day they are born,
That very day, must also die.
Eternal, for them, the light of day:
They’re born when the sun is already high
And die before Apollo’s course

Photography

Joao Bracourt

Across the visible sky is run.
We too, of our lives, must make one day:
We never know, my Lydia, nor want
To know of nights before or after
The little while that we may last.

Photography

Joao Bracourt

2.
To be great, be whole: nothing that’s you
Should you exaggerate or exclude.
In each thing, be all. Give all you are
In the least you ever do.
The whole moon, because it rides so high,
Is reflected in each pool.

Photography

Joao Bracourt