Voyeur was my final project at IPF (Instituto Português de Fotografia), in Porto — a body of work about the curiosity of peering into other people’s worlds, with a bold colour aesthetic inspired by David LaChapelle. The images invite you in, but the last one imposes a limit: the door that won’t open is the limit I chose to set myself — the same limit I set when I never showed the most violent images from the INEM project.

The connection between the two projects isn’t one of opposites, but of theme. While photographing INEM, I entered people’s homes at their most vulnerable moments, and felt something of voyeurism in that access — it wasn’t mine to have, either. Later, at the exhibition, I felt it again, this time from the other side, as a viewer. Voyeur is photographically very different from INEM, but touches the same nerve: curiosity is universal, we all feel it, and the question that remains is how far we can go — what counts as news, what deserves to be seen, and where the limit of respect for who we photograph actually lies.

It was exhibited at the II Bienal de Milheirós (2009), at IPF (2009), at the Centro Cultural da Trofa (2010), and in a group exhibition at Junta de Freguesia de Sandim (2010).