STORY-TRÅD·noje

Photo taken 17 years ago inspires award-winning campaign

A photograph taken with no artistic pretensions other than to capture everyday life won one of the highest honors in global advertising 17 years after it was taken. The Sinfonia da Energia (“Symphony of Energy”) campaign, drawing inspiration from a picture photojournalist Paulo Pinto, won the Gold Cannes Lion this year at the Cannes International Festival of Creativity, in France. Notícias relacionadas:“The Secret Agent” makes history at Golden Globes with two awards.Considered the most important award in the global communications and advertising industry, the festival brings together thousands of campaigns from dozens of countries each year. The Gold Cannes Lion is among the event’s top honors and recognizes work of creative excellence capable of transforming ideas into cultural, social, or marketing impact. The story dates back to August 2009, when Pinto photographed birds perched on power lines in his hometown Santana do Livramento, in Rio Grande do Sul state. At the time, he was vacationing in the city, even though he had been living in São Paulo since the 1990s, where he had built a solid career in photojournalism. Over the course of more than three decades in the profession, he worked for some of Brazil’s leading media outlets, documenting significant events in the country’s political, social, economic, and cultural life. His work has earned him numerous national awards and recognition for the sensitivity of his documentary vision. On that day, however, he had no specific assignment. After lunch, he accompanied his mother to the house of a neighbor known for feeding the local birds every day. It was she who drew his attention to the number of birds lined up on the wires. Days later, the image published in a newspaper caught the attention of musician, composer, and advertising executive Jarbas Agnelli, who saw a musical theme in the five wires and transformed the birds’ positions into musical notes. Musical score “I looked up and thought, ‘it looks like a musical score.’ I’m no expert on music; it was just an impression. I took hundreds of photos and chose that one without imagining it would actually become music years later,” Paulo Pinto recalled. Four days after the photo was published, he received an unexpected email. “It was Jarbas saying he’d clipped the photo from the newspaper, taken it to his piano, and composed a piece of music using the birds’ positions as notes. I was moved. For a photograph to become music is something extraordinary.” Paulo Pinto photographed birds perched on power lines in his hometown Santana do Livramento, in Rio Grande do Sul state – Paulo Pinto / Personal archive In his reply, Pinto sent the composer the original, high-resolution image. A few minutes later, he received another response. “He wrote, ‘There are more birds here. There are more notes. I’m going back to the piano.’ Half an hour later, he sent the final version.” The composition, entitled Birds on the Wires, quickly gained international attention. Posted on YouTube in 2009, the video reached over a million views in just a few days, became one of the platform’s most-viewed videos at the time, and, the following year, was selected for performances organized by the Guggenheim Foundation, including a performance with musicians from the Juilliard School in New York. Symphony In 2024, Jarbas Agnelli reached out to the photographer again with a different proposal – to transform the original idea into a symphony. At the invitation of the Brazilian Association of Electric Power Distributors (Abradee), the composer compiled hundreds of photographs of birds on power lines submitted by photographers from across Brazil. About 60 images were incorporated into the score of the award-winning Sinfonia da Energia campaign, created to showcase the coexistence of birds and power lines. Pinto participated in the project once again with photographs taken at the very same location where it all began. “We returned to Santana do Livramento. My mother had already passed away. And so had the neighbor who used to feed the birds. It was the same place, but a different story. That photograph took on a significance that no one could have imagined.” The Gold Cannes Lion The news of the award came in a message sent by Jarbas directly from Cannes. “He simply wrote, ‘We’re in Cannes. We just won the Gold Lion.’ I never imagined that a photograph taken in front of my mother’s house could go so far.” “People look for extraordinary scenes, but they’re often found in the simplest things. Everyone saw those little birds. I saw a photograph. Jarbas saw a melody. Each of us completed the other’s vision.” For Pinto, the meaning of the photograph became even clearer years later, when he returned to Santana do Livramento to continue the project and no longer found the same scene in front of the house where it all began. “When I returned, the little birds were no longer on the power lines. That’s when I realized they had gone out into the world. And that’s exactly what happened. Those birds left that place and traveled across the planet through photography, music, and now, the symphony. That moment captured in 2009 ceased to be just an everyday scene and took on new meanings, reaching people in different countries. In the end, the little birds really did fly away.”