@ Sofia Silva, protesto contra o desalojo de São Lázaro; Protest against São Lázaro‘s eviction, May 31st 2012
@ Sofia Silva, protesto contra o desalojo de São Lázaro; Protest against São Lázaro‘s eviction, May 31st 2012
@ Sofia Silva, protesto contra o desalojo de São Lázaro; Protest against São Lázaro‘s eviction, May 31st 2012
@ Sofia Silva, protesto contra o desalojo de São Lázaro; Protest against São Lázaro‘s eviction, May 31st 2012
@ Sofia Silva, protesto contra o desalojo de São Lázaro; Protest against São Lázaro‘s eviction, May 31st 2012
Times like this highlight how abstract the meaning of “our rights” can be. Despite the facts indicating we’ve grown as a civilization and are able to fully communicate, the state can always impose itself on every argument, and so it does when sending its perpetrators with orders that are as arbitrary as excessive.
On the phone with his boss I heard one of the agents saying: “Captain, I’m here with the squatters at Igreja dos Anjos …” I’ll excuse myself from completing the description (he was asking for instructions on how to proceed) since what I want to emphasize is the nomenclature (squatters/ocupas) already denoting the lack of understanding the police sector has of who “we” are. Squatters, libertarians, anarchists, extreme leftists, lumping it all together in something that offends us and often dissevers.
It’s only a matter of time before we spend a night in jail. Those pursuing their “right to protest” and therefore often encountering the police forces will, sooner or later, incur in disobedience. We’d better find a lawyer and leave him on guard whenever we hit the streets, in chance we hit a roadblock and are forced to go around.
Note: São Lázaro was not an ordinary squat, but a communal space where people met, shared knowledge and gave back to the city. I was never there, nor am I interested in this particular example,but I’ve occupied, lived in squats before and am against the notion of property in public real estate, those being the reasons I fully support the protest for this eviction.
Bernardo Sassetti is a very gifted pianist and composer, but apart from that he is also very passionate about photography and was currently working on publishing a book. He passed away today, at 41, after falling from a cliff, while photographing. Portugal keeps paving the way for a greek tragedy… His music, his gift
can’t help but wonder: at the same time, I was photographing in another cliff
As usual, a local subject on the world news for all the wrong reasons. This photograph, taken yesterday, is traveling the world, as if it added or stated something new. It belongs to Hugo Correia and depicts his coworker Patricia Melo, from AFP, instants before being hit by a police officer, amidst demonstrations related to the General Strike.
Although reading this image may seem immediate, I can assure you it is not. It highlights severe gaps in the Portuguese media, namely the fact that they are incapable of giving a truthful account of events. It has always been the case. One could think, I did, that being their relation to the truth so superficial and watching their colleagues’ work being blocked (another photojournalist was beaten by the police), they would make an effort to tell the story and trace the line of events, but that’s not really the case. We lack good journalism, people who do it for the right reasons and want to pass on information to their pairs, who want to share their knowledge and in that process give people the necessary tools to fight injustice and oppression.
Censorship has taken over and it seems that this image is going to mark the moment the country is made aware of it and decides to keep his mouth shut and eyes closed. Unfortunately we seem to have nowhere to go but to be throw in the streets to fight the most cowardly side of this oppressive state: the police. It’s a shame, we’re going to meet the oppressor’s wishes, because that’s what the state wants, and it will inevitably happen.
Duarte’s new work is in a rare place between verity, intimacy and honesty and the exciting and self obsessed world of fiction. The narrative constructed is that of “Z”, a physician said to have gone to Germany to specialized in facial surgery. We’re then introduced to the idea of the family album and presented with historic images of very significant relevant, both in time and the place they occupy, as in relation to their place amidst a personal account of things: which events matter, what isn’t being showed, etc? Unfortunately the work isn’t up at his site yet, but I’m sure it will be available soon.”
“What remains of what once was – Cabanas Álbum), the artist invokes memory imprecision through erasing, scratching, and fading away of images belonging to her closest surrounding: family. The photographic processing torn off – accumulating in the bottom of the frame – erases information on spaces, context and characters. Just like we all unwillingly discard our personal history, until what remains is but ashes from times gone by.”
As far as the public eye goes, this is our (Portuguese) new emerging photographer. Her images, on the realm of the documentary, have a lot of presence; they reveal intimacy and good awareness of the surroundings. Although not having a strong conductor, I’ll dare to say the thread amidst her work is the stylization of memories, absence, the loss of, the non appropriation of reality and non interference with its time.
“The work aims to set up a dialogue between truth and deception in representation through the context of photography. I look for the juxtaposition between images and their contextual settings, aiming to explore the feeling of absurd that often occurs at this meeting point. The tension between the engaging qualities of colour and the eeriness of raw topics often invades the work, reacting to the latent mutation of spaces, apparatuses and trends of society. This play of metaphors occurs in a kind of push and pull between natural hypothesis and the furtive naturalization of spaces.”
How often do we speak of nakedness as if it were a kind of truth, the naked truth? “Why do those who abandon clothes to pursue their leisure and recreation call themselves naturists? Are nakedness, nature and truth inseparable? Stripping naked, Georges Bataille wrote, “offers a contrast to self-possession, to discontinuous existence, in other words. It is a state of communication revealing a quest for a possible continuance of being beyond the confines of the self. Bodies open out to a state of continuity through secret channels ….” In nakedness we dream of reunion with all that is non-self. You and I and nature will fuse into a singular truth. Paradise Regained.
pre·lap·sar·i·an (prē’lăp-sâr’ē-ən) adj. Of or relating to the period before the fall of Adam and Eve. Nakedness here is self-consciousness, and the penalty is human conflict. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
Paradise Lost. Let’s not pretend that we know and understand each other’s needs, wants and desires, but let’s live with the consequences of our distance and differences. It’s all we have.
If paradise is half as nice as heaven that you take me to
Who needs paradise, I’d rather have you.
“In my last project, “Memories of Paper”, I photograph façades, recesses of buildings, more or less degraded, and print these captures on ordinary paper. Then I crumple and throw them away as waste part of a construction process. After this, in an act of historical rescue, I photograph them once again, giving them a new shape, a new weight, a new dimension. I question the frontiers between present and past, between memory, remembrance and oblivion.”
“This series is a metaphor for the relationship between Man and the animals he hunts or frequents every day. The former predators, companions and meat supply are transformed, not into trophies but objects of estime and amazement. The former wild animals go from their natural habitats to homes and cafés, while pets keep themselves in their owners’ houses, in shop windows, on shelves and televisions…”
More of Valter’s work here This series in particular here
“Brígida Mendes’s work investigates our perception of reality in relation to historical and present ideas of looking and depicting. Using the act of construction and implied deconstruction, she examines and overstates the line between fiction and reality where our notion of real becomes ungraspable.
Developing an interpretation of everyday life, her work seeks to create a cultural commentary on different aspects of society, which invite the viewer to look behind the obvious, developing critical ideas and disavowing pre-established codes of perception.” (…)
“Rui Calçada Bastos also exploits astute readings of the early conceptual artists. He talks of “revealing the City’s intimate histories and continuous memory” and “the sensitivities that become attached to spaces”. That is a large plateful since Berlin is certainly a city that abounds with histories – some are intimate to the story of the city itself and other to the individuals who live there – but Calçada Bastos´ intention is to focus on particulars, to dig them out by attention to detail. He avoids the large stories: Berlin of the Second World War, Berlin of the Fall of the Wall, Berlin of the night life of the neo expressionists, from Fetting, Salome etc running on down until it ran out, Berlin with its Beuysian Academy, Berlin with the presence of Michael Werner, Sigmar Polke, Jorg Immendorf, and Markus Lupertz, Berlin of the spy films, of Lotte Lenya, of the Air Lift, of Willy Brandt, Berlin of May 68, of cheap property, of artist studios, of immigrants. He tries to find more what Cezanne called les petites sensations, the glimpses of things that suggest the city’s sensitivity, its moods and rhythms, the soundscapes, the sense of roaming the city, the accumulation of visual knowledge that finally allows us to feel at ease, to somehow belong.”
“This collaborative family study spans four generations (involving all 32 blood related members of the family) and three countries, the UK, Ireland and the USA. It aims to memorialise the family through sets of images, as well as to explore the role photography has at every level to define, group, classify and individualise us. The series looks at our sense of self, migration, family history and memory, with particular regard to the relationship between photographer / subject / audience.
The images vary from personal portraits to pseudo-forensic and pseudo-anthropological documents. Each person is photographed in the same way, regardless of age or place. The Dowling Study investigates not only the nature of a family group but also my own sense of self, place, belonging and heritage.
Within such a group the use of photography helps to create emotional links, form a group identity (both fictional and real), highlight loss within the family unit, record genealogy, suspend familial events, and expose cultural, emotional and social parallels and contradictions.
Finally, the project highlights the ways in which individuals represent themselves within the family group, both privately and publicly, and perceive the self and others.”
“A fictional trend is apparent in every dimension of Manuel Botelho’s work: in painting and drawing, and now in his photography.
That trend is more evocative than narrative, more descriptive than illustrative, more architectural than dramatic and, strangely enough, more rational than emotional.
Indeed, nothing is told in the scenes that he stages […]; nothing is explained, no continuous action can be perceived. Nonetheless, everything expresses a discourse that is evocative of a real situation and which obsessively details its scenic elements […] without ever limiting itself to any historicist or naturalistic logic.
Here, it is a matter of using elements drawn from a specific war (the Portuguese colonial war) to speak about that war and all other wars […]. Extending a practice already present in his paintings and drawings, the artist turns to self-representation. He now appears in the role of soldier-as-symbol-of-all-soldiers, thus also self-representing the artist at war […] with himself.
Ração de combate consists of a group of images that we may think of as still-lives. The human presence is strong, but due to its fragmented character, it can only be understood as yet one more of the still-life’s elements […]. And the accumulation of board games, dice and playing cards, old bank notes and unappetising food, ashtrays, cigarette stubs and secret maps, classified documents and military or secretarial objects – along with the aggressive or disturbing way all this is assembled – enhances the psychological atmosphere we associate with war.
Moving away from the universes where he started from, Manuel Botelho places himself at a new frontier. But that evolution occurs in full poetic coherence: while remaining within the confines of a strict grid, his pieces generate a very high inner tension […]; photography and colour add an unpleasant weight to these realistic testimonials, repelling rather than attracting us, going beyond the real rather than just depicting it.”
@ Sofia Silva, protesto contra o desalojo de São Lázaro; Protest against São Lázaro‘s eviction, May 31st 2012
@ Sofia Silva, protesto contra o desalojo de São Lázaro; Protest against São Lázaro‘s eviction, May 31st 2012
@ Sofia Silva, protesto contra o desalojo de São Lázaro; Protest against São Lázaro‘s eviction, May 31st 2012
@ Sofia Silva, protesto contra o desalojo de São Lázaro; Protest against São Lázaro‘s eviction, May 31st 2012
@ Sofia Silva, protesto contra o desalojo de São Lázaro; Protest against São Lázaro‘s eviction, May 31st 2012
© Luís Campos, The Last Vision of Amilcar Cabral, from the series The Last Vision of the Heroes, 1995
