“SEEING THE LIGHT”

Ed. 1/100, 2023

This photobook deals with a matter and theme that fascinates me in my photography practice and aesthetic research: the light.  Seeing the light is a sentence that can be understood under a metaphorical approach (as a meaning for realizing or understanding something), or “real”, if it applies to photography, for instance, by allowing us to see and realize what surrounds us. On the other hand, the absence of light may blend, obscure or hide what surrounds us, thus, manipulating perception.

“Seeing the Light” photobook, with 80 pages and about 60 photos gather a group of records taken within the last 3 years that, more than diversified spaces or visible objects, highlight my understanding of the essence of light in photography - color range, texture, ambience, amongst others - being it of natural or artificial origin. As conveyed in this photobook, light prevails and overlaps with the objects that, apparently, are being photographed.

“Seeing the Light” deals with spaces of different nature, in a possible balance between natural environments and man-made structures, sacred spaces and mundane ones, or even between long lasting ones against ephemeral ones.

The book’s layout, which assumes the black as a critical part of light, further aims suggesting to the reader visual dialogues between clarity and obscurity, wide view v/s detailed view, and the detailed perception of light that makes us guess what is not obvious or apparently visible.

In brief, “Seeing the Light” may be understood as an exercise of complementarity and confrontation between what we are able to see against what we are only able to guess in photography.

“TREASURE HOTEL”

Ed. 1/60, 2022 (sold out)

“Treasure Hotel” é uma narrativa visual relativa ao período de quarentena obrigatória de 21 dias vivida pelo autor entre os dias 5 e 26 de Janeiro de 2022, aquando do seu regresso a Macau. É uma ilustração simbólica dos estados de alma decorrentes do período de isolamento então vivido.

“Treasure Hotel”, pela sequência proposta dos registos fotográficos e “capítulos” criados, estes relativos: à viagem, chegada, espaço interior, vivência quotidiana, leituras e visão para o exterior, propõe uma narrativa de cariz pessoal mas também suficientemente lata para poder ser interpretada pelo potencial leitor. “Treasure Hotel” é assim uma ilustração de momentos de introspecção intensos e muito específicos.

“Treasure Hotel”, porventura, permitirá encontrar semelhanças com visões e experiências similares vividas por outros viajantes chegados a Macau em circunstâncias similares, ou propiciar aos que não viveram semelhante experiência, uma ilustração de um processo para o qual nunca estamos suficientemente preparados. Por tal facto, conforme referenciado no texto de suporte do fotolivro, é um registo de “21 dias de uma outra realidade” em que “os dias se seguiam às noites, em que ambos pareciam ser sem sentido e sem fim”.

“SOMEWHERE”

Ed 1/300, 2018.

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), one of the greatest German painters noted that the painter depicts not “what he sees before him, but what he sees within him”. This outstanding statement of how the eyes (the mind) sees and understands the reality of nature and its beauty is the key drive of the herewith photo series “Somewhere”.

“Somewhere” is not about specific places – they may be anywhere - but on how we perceive their nature and presence, even if populated by evidences of manufactured action, trying to capture the “within silence” and sublime presence of a number of places which caught the photographer’s attention and, hopefully, yours as well...

This series is the outcome of several visits to “other places” which were carried out by the photographer along the last decade - some far others close by. These photos were digitally “developed” on a personal way, which intends to express the photographer’s aesthetical mind frame and his perception of nature and their values.

In brief, “Somewhere” is about places that stand before us, however, waiting to be seen “within us”.