Jakob Frödin: One thing we often return to is how much of life is inherited. Systems. Expectations. Ways of living that people never really choose for themselves. They simply grow into them. You grow up somewhere and naturally assume that reality only looks one way.

Cédric Viaene: I think that's exactly it. If you're only exposed to one mentality, you're very limited. You don't know more than what's there. You grow up in one place, one culture, one environment, and naturally you think that's reality. That's how life works. That's what success looks like. That's what people should want.

Then you travel somewhere else and suddenly people live completely differently. They value different things. They are happy with different things. You realise that maybe nothing is as fixed as you thought.

Jakob: Maybe exposure is the opposite of conditioning.

Cédric: Exactly. When I was younger I was much more materialistic. I liked watches, cars, all these things. Somebody had a nicer car, somebody had the newest phone, somebody got picked up by their parents in something expensive. You think these things matter because that's all you're exposed to.

Then you go somewhere else and you see people living differently. You start enjoying smaller things. You start questioning what actually matters.

Nicolas Spiers: Most people want certainty before they move. They want to know exactly where something is leading.

Cédric: I was always the opposite. I think the best way to find out is simply to try. People can tell you things. Your parents can tell you things. Society tells you things. But some people need to experience things themselves. Sometimes people tell you not to do something and the exact opposite turns out to be true.

I moved to Australia with very little money. I worked knocking on doors for charities. You knock on a hundred doors, ninety people tell you to fuck off, maybe one person invites you inside. You learn very quickly that rejection doesn't matter. You become comfortable speaking to people. You become comfortable being uncomfortable.

Those experiences shaped me much more than anything I studied.

Jakob: You don't seem very interested in certainty.

Cédric: No. I think certainty is overrated.

Brazil comes up all the time because everything felt right. That's really the only way I can explain it. The people, the situations, the places. Everything somehow connected.

You can't know one hundred percent every time you do something. You don't know whether somebody is the right person. You don't know whether a place is right. You don't know whether you're making the right decision. At some point it becomes intuition.

Jakob: Do you think your intuition improved?

Cédric: Definitely. You trust yourself more. You understand people better. After a while you realise that nobody really knows what they're doing. Everybody is improvising.

Jakob: You always speak about wanting to experience places locally.

Cédric: That's the entire reason I travel. What's the point of going somewhere and looking for things you can get at home? You can fly twelve hours and still live exactly the same life. The same cafés. The same apartments. The same people. The same food.

Everything becomes designed for visitors. I want to understand how people actually live.

Brazil was probably the strongest example of that. I learned Portuguese because nobody around me spoke English. Suddenly you aren't observing anymore. You're participating.

Even people from Rio would tell me not to go to the places I was going. Taxi drivers would hear the names of neighbourhoods and tell me not to go there. But I never felt unsafe. I felt more unsafe in Ipanema or Copacabana.

Inside the favela there are rules. There is respect. There is community. People often imagine these places through violence, but what I experienced was something very different.

Jakob: Maybe what you're really responding to is authenticity.

Cédric: Completely. People are very real. If they don't like you, they make it obvious. If they like you, they make it obvious too. There isn't this constant performance.

Three days before I left they organised a party for me. Everybody came. Even today I still speak to many of those people.

One of my closest friends there is Mauro. I met him on the beach. I had my camera with me and honestly I didn't even want to take it out because I didn't want to be another tourist with a camera. But I photographed him. Then I photographed his friends.

They wanted to see the pictures and I had to explain that it was film. That the photographs would come later. And somehow that became the beginning of everything.

Eventually he invited me into Cidade de Deus. I asked him if it was safe. He said, "With me it's fine.” At some point you either trust people or you don’t. So I went.

He introduced me to everybody. We rode motorcycles through the neighbourhood. I saw things I never expected to see. Some of the craziest experiences of my life happened there.

Jakob: So you never felt unsafe?

Cédric: Honestly, never.

The dangerous part often exists outside. The tourist areas. The places where nobody knows you. Inside there are rules. People protect the community. The people themselves were incredibly generous.

Nicolas: Maybe that's also why certain places stay with you. They still have a social structure that feels real. You feel that people depend on each other.

Cédric: Completely.

Jakob: Film almost feels connected to this way of experiencing places.

Cédric: I think so. I never started shooting film because I thought it was cool. I simply liked the results. I liked the uncertainty.

You don't know exactly what you're going to get. The film still has to travel. The heat affects it. Airport scanners affect it. Time affects it. Everything leaves a trace.

Digital photography can become very controlled. Film leaves room for accidents.

Jakob: Life is unexpected. Film is unexpected.

Cédric: Exactly. With digital you can shoot one thousand photographs. With film you become more selective. You wait. You think. You commit. The image still has to reveal itself.

Sometimes I wish I shot more digital because life would become easier. Clients want images immediately. A week ago I shot Zara and they wanted pictures the next day.

But somehow I always return to film.

Nicolas: Have you had major failures?

Cédric: Two dead Contax cameras.

One died because of salt water in Rio. Three million people on the beach during New Year's Eve. A wave came in and the camera was finished.

I brought it to Madrid. Nobody could fix it. But that's the risk. That's also the beauty.

Jakob: You seem to live without much routine.

Cédric: I've never had a sleeping schedule. For ten years. I wake up at seven. I wake up at ten. I wake up at noon. It's always changing.

Sometimes I struggle with that. Sometimes I probably need more structure. Sport is the one constant. If I don't move for too long I go crazy. Motorcycles. Training. Running. Surfing. Movement.

Maybe movement itself became the routine.

Nicolas: A lot of people feel like they need one hour of exercise because the rest of their day they sit still. Maybe your life is simply active in a different way.

Jakob: Evolution is very slow but society changes extremely quickly. Maybe the most natural thing is simply to move through the day.

Cédric: Maybe.

But I've never really felt trapped. I've always done what I wanted to do. I've always relied on myself. Nobody really makes the decisions for you. And nobody really saves you either. People have their own lives. Their own problems. Their own struggles. You realise how few people are really there for you.

Two years ago I lost my dad. That changed everything. Work stopped. I turned down jobs. Photography stopped making sense. It took me a long time to get back. When I met you guys things were difficult.

Honestly, I felt like I had to start from zero again.I knew how to take photographs but somehow I had lost momentum. Brazil gave some of that back. A new place can wake something up again.

Jakob: Difficult experiences also make you very sensitive to authenticity. You start noticing people's intentions. You notice who is there for you and who wants something from you.

Maybe that's also why certain places become important. Brazil. People. Creativity. Making things.

Cédric: I think so. You realise who is there for you. And there are very few.

Maybe you can count them on one hand. Those people become very important. And work changes too. You want to work with people that feel real. You want to tell stories that feel real. You cannot force creativity. You cannot force stories. Something has to happen. Something has to move you.

Different places still inspire me because they expose me to something new. Life happens and somehow it becomes photographs.

Nicolas: Ibiza feels like another contradiction. Historically it's this place where people came looking for freedom, art, music, nature and another way of living. But now it also represents something very superficial. Status, access, being seen.

Yet we still keep returning because there is something real underneath all of that.

Cédric: Completely. I ended up there because of work. I met a friend who lived there. A few days became more than a month. Because I knew people who actually lived there I experienced a completely different island. The north. Hidden beaches. People playing drums. Places tourists never see.

There's still something magical there. At the same time it has become very commercial. Very superficial in some ways. But there are still these moments. I went to a party recently. No phones. Everybody's phones were taped. Everything existed for one night. Musicians. Artists. Two stages. Everything was built because somebody loved music and wanted people together. Those things still exist.

Jakob: Our experience is similar. The people who stay there often made a very active decision. They left another life behind. A restaurant. A farm. Music. A club. Yoga. Whatever it is. They decided to go there and build another version of life. And that's probably what creates the energy.

Cédric: Exactly. People told me years ago that Ibiza either takes you in or throws you out. And I believe that.

Jakob: So what are you looking for now?

Cédric: I think I just want to continue. I'd love to spend more time in Africa. More of Latin America. There are still places I haven't seen. And with work I want to move more into video and directing. Photography can only tell you so much. Video allows you to go deeper. To really tell something.

Anthony Bourdain honestly had the dream job. Travelling. Eating. Meeting people. Listening. Understanding places. That idea really appeals to me.

Jakob: Maybe that's what all of this has been from the beginning. Not travel. Not photography. But trying to understand people.

Cédric: Maybe. I think what all of this really gave me wasn't the countries. Not even the photographs. It was simply the understanding that there is always another way.

Another way to live. Another way to work. Another way to make images. Another way to understand people.

And once you've seen that, it's very difficult to go back to believing that there is only one way.

Jakob Frödin: One thing we often return to is how much of life is inherited. Systems. Expectations. Ways of living that people never really choose for themselves. They simply grow into them. You grow up somewhere and naturally assume that reality only looks one way.

Cédric Viaene: I think that's exactly it. If you're only exposed to one mentality, you're very limited. You don't know more than what's there. You grow up in one place, one culture, one environment, and naturally you think that's reality. That's how life works. That's what success looks like. That's what people should want.

Then you travel somewhere else and suddenly people live completely differently. They value different things. They are happy with different things. You realise that maybe nothing is as fixed as you thought.

Jakob: Maybe exposure is the opposite of conditioning.

Cédric: Exactly. When I was younger I was much more materialistic. I liked watches, cars, all these things. Somebody had a nicer car, somebody had the newest phone, somebody got picked up by their parents in something expensive. You think these things matter because that's all you're exposed to.

Then you go somewhere else and you see people living differently. You start enjoying smaller things. You start questioning what actually matters.

Nicolas Spiers: Most people want certainty before they move. They want to know exactly where something is leading.

Cédric: I was always the opposite. I think the best way to find out is simply to try. People can tell you things. Your parents can tell you things. Society tells you things. But some people need to experience things themselves. Sometimes people tell you not to do something and the exact opposite turns out to be true.

I moved to Australia with very little money. I worked knocking on doors for charities. You knock on a hundred doors, ninety people tell you to fuck off, maybe one person invites you inside. You learn very quickly that rejection doesn't matter. You become comfortable speaking to people. You become comfortable being uncomfortable.

Those experiences shaped me much more than anything I studied.

Jakob: You don't seem very interested in certainty.

Cédric: No. I think certainty is overrated.

Brazil comes up all the time because everything felt right. That's really the only way I can explain it. The people, the situations, the places. Everything somehow connected.

You can't know one hundred percent every time you do something. You don't know whether somebody is the right person. You don't know whether a place is right. You don't know whether you're making the right decision. At some point it becomes intuition.

Jakob: Do you think your intuition improved?

Cédric: Definitely. You trust yourself more. You understand people better. After a while you realise that nobody really knows what they're doing. Everybody is improvising.

Jakob: You always speak about wanting to experience places locally.

Cédric: That's the entire reason I travel. What's the point of going somewhere and looking for things you can get at home? You can fly twelve hours and still live exactly the same life. The same cafés. The same apartments. The same people. The same food.

Everything becomes designed for visitors. I want to understand how people actually live.

Brazil was probably the strongest example of that. I learned Portuguese because nobody around me spoke English. Suddenly you aren't observing anymore. You're participating.

Even people from Rio would tell me not to go to the places I was going. Taxi drivers would hear the names of neighbourhoods and tell me not to go there. But I never felt unsafe. I felt more unsafe in Ipanema or Copacabana.

Inside the favela there are rules. There is respect. There is community. People often imagine these places through violence, but what I experienced was something very different.

Jakob: Maybe what you're really responding to is authenticity.

Cédric: Completely. People are very real. If they don't like you, they make it obvious. If they like you, they make it obvious too. There isn't this constant performance.

Three days before I left they organised a party for me. Everybody came. Even today I still speak to many of those people.

One of my closest friends there is Mauro. I met him on the beach. I had my camera with me and honestly I didn't even want to take it out because I didn't want to be another tourist with a camera. But I photographed him. Then I photographed his friends.

They wanted to see the pictures and I had to explain that it was film. That the photographs would come later. And somehow that became the beginning of everything.

Eventually he invited me into Cidade de Deus. I asked him if it was safe. He said, "With me it's fine.” At some point you either trust people or you don’t. So I went.

He introduced me to everybody. We rode motorcycles through the neighbourhood. I saw things I never expected to see. Some of the craziest experiences of my life happened there.

Jakob: So you never felt unsafe?

Cédric: Honestly, never.

The dangerous part often exists outside. The tourist areas. The places where nobody knows you. Inside there are rules. People protect the community. The people themselves were incredibly generous.

Nicolas: Maybe that's also why certain places stay with you. They still have a social structure that feels real. You feel that people depend on each other.

Cédric: Completely.

Jakob: Film almost feels connected to this way of experiencing places.

Cédric: I think so. I never started shooting film because I thought it was cool. I simply liked the results. I liked the uncertainty.

You don't know exactly what you're going to get. The film still has to travel. The heat affects it. Airport scanners affect it. Time affects it. Everything leaves a trace.

Digital photography can become very controlled. Film leaves room for accidents.

Jakob: Life is unexpected. Film is unexpected.

Cédric: Exactly. With digital you can shoot one thousand photographs. With film you become more selective. You wait. You think. You commit. The image still has to reveal itself.

Sometimes I wish I shot more digital because life would become easier. Clients want images immediately. A week ago I shot Zara and they wanted pictures the next day.

But somehow I always return to film.

Nicolas: Have you had major failures?

Cédric: Two dead Contax cameras.

One died because of salt water in Rio. Three million people on the beach during New Year's Eve. A wave came in and the camera was finished.

I brought it to Madrid. Nobody could fix it. But that's the risk. That's also the beauty.

Jakob: You seem to live without much routine.

Cédric: I've never had a sleeping schedule. For ten years. I wake up at seven. I wake up at ten. I wake up at noon. It's always changing.

Sometimes I struggle with that. Sometimes I probably need more structure. Sport is the one constant. If I don't move for too long I go crazy. Motorcycles. Training. Running. Surfing. Movement.

Maybe movement itself became the routine.

Nicolas: A lot of people feel like they need one hour of exercise because the rest of their day they sit still. Maybe your life is simply active in a different way.

Jakob: Evolution is very slow but society changes extremely quickly. Maybe the most natural thing is simply to move through the day.

Cédric: Maybe.

But I've never really felt trapped. I've always done what I wanted to do. I've always relied on myself. Nobody really makes the decisions for you. And nobody really saves you either. People have their own lives. Their own problems. Their own struggles. You realise how few people are really there for you.

Two years ago I lost my dad. That changed everything. Work stopped. I turned down jobs. Photography stopped making sense. It took me a long time to get back. When I met you guys things were difficult.

Honestly, I felt like I had to start from zero again.I knew how to take photographs but somehow I had lost momentum. Brazil gave some of that back. A new place can wake something up again.

Jakob: Difficult experiences also make you very sensitive to authenticity. You start noticing people's intentions. You notice who is there for you and who wants something from you.

Maybe that's also why certain places become important. Brazil. People. Creativity. Making things.

Cédric: I think so. You realise who is there for you. And there are very few.

Maybe you can count them on one hand. Those people become very important. And work changes too. You want to work with people that feel real. You want to tell stories that feel real. You cannot force creativity. You cannot force stories. Something has to happen. Something has to move you.

Different places still inspire me because they expose me to something new. Life happens and somehow it becomes photographs.

Nicolas: Ibiza feels like another contradiction. Historically it's this place where people came looking for freedom, art, music, nature and another way of living. But now it also represents something very superficial. Status, access, being seen.

Yet we still keep returning because there is something real underneath all of that.

Cédric: Completely. I ended up there because of work. I met a friend who lived there. A few days became more than a month. Because I knew people who actually lived there I experienced a completely different island. The north. Hidden beaches. People playing drums. Places tourists never see.

There's still something magical there. At the same time it has become very commercial. Very superficial in some ways. But there are still these moments. I went to a party recently. No phones. Everybody's phones were taped. Everything existed for one night. Musicians. Artists. Two stages. Everything was built because somebody loved music and wanted people together. Those things still exist.

Jakob: Our experience is similar. The people who stay there often made a very active decision. They left another life behind. A restaurant. A farm. Music. A club. Yoga. Whatever it is. They decided to go there and build another version of life. And that's probably what creates the energy.

Cédric: Exactly. People told me years ago that Ibiza either takes you in or throws you out. And I believe that.

Jakob: So what are you looking for now?

Cédric: I think I just want to continue. I'd love to spend more time in Africa. More of Latin America. There are still places I haven't seen. And with work I want to move more into video and directing. Photography can only tell you so much. Video allows you to go deeper. To really tell something.

Anthony Bourdain honestly had the dream job. Travelling. Eating. Meeting people. Listening. Understanding places. That idea really appeals to me.

Jakob: Maybe that's what all of this has been from the beginning. Not travel. Not photography. But trying to understand people.

Cédric: Maybe. I think what all of this really gave me wasn't the countries. Not even the photographs. It was simply the understanding that there is always another way.

Another way to live. Another way to work. Another way to make images. Another way to understand people.

And once you've seen that, it's very difficult to go back to believing that there is only one way.