Live music photography runs the risk of feeling a little bit stale, don’t you think? Man sings into microphone, man writhes around on ground with said microphone, guitarist bends string and makes scrunchy, effort-implying face, and the camera clicks. Repeat for about 50 years. But London-based photographer Andreia Lemos sees a different way.

“I like the in-between moments,” she says, regarding her tendency to photograph singers mid-stanza. “It feels like they have a lot going on in their heads, and it’s interesting to shoot them and capture that moment, when they’re kind of lost in their heads on stage.”

Moving to London from Rio de Janeiro in 2013, Lemos says she quickly fell into a routine of going to gigs almost every night. “Where I’m from, it was quite rare that your favorite artists would come all the way to Brazil, obviously,” she says. “So there would be maybe two or three concerts a year that I was really excited for.”

A photographer since childhood, she began shooting shows around London, and within a few years she was a fixture at clubs like the Shacklewell Arms, the 100 Club, and the Moth Club. “As you start shooting bigger bands with bigger venues, it gets harder and harder to get an actually good, authentic photo of the night, because there’s so many rules and restrictions,” she says. “So those beginning days were very exciting because of that, too.”

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