Mário Martins was born in Vila Real on 25 June 1948. Like thousands of young Portuguese men, he was called up for the Colonial War in 1970, mobilised against his will. He was a soldier In Mozambique within an independent intervention organisation, operating in Niassa, Zambézia and Tete. From there he brought the experiences presented in this book, which reveal his social concern in a war he considered senseless and which strengthened his affinity with the Portuguese liberation movement of 25 April 1974. This universal language of photography has always seduced him, but it was only in Mozambique that he became deeply involved in its practice. Africa was an unusual reality, an astonishment. Amidst the hardships of war, he found a fascinating world of luminous landscapes and intense gazes that locked him into one goal: to capture them. With a gun in one hand and a camera in the other, he captured these unique moments, along with a few other photographs that he didn’t take.