THE QUESTION OF LANDSCAPE

Augusto Lemos

The landscape is not simply what lies before us; it is a concept, a cultural construct. It is not merely a physical location, but an interpretation, a framework for understanding nature that results from learning. Today, with the predominance of learning through images, we naturally identify this part with the whole, this knowable fragment that functions as a whole, and the landscape is truly what one sees.

From which it follows, as Enrique Carbó explains, “The territory is not a landscape. It can only be so if the circumstances allow for its transformation into an element capable of objectifying the aesthetic enjoyment of those who can detach themselves from their status as historical subjects bound to the territory. The landscape is thus, first and foremost, a matter of gaze, of a gaze detached from the subject’s vital demands regarding the territory.”

Although I have addressed other themes, landscape photography has been the subject I have explored most, from the 1970s to the present day. For this reason, I have included in the large panel dozens of photographs that have been exhibited or published, taken with different

cameras over time. Some, the oldest ones from the 1970s, were captured with a Nikkormat FT3 or a Nikon FE.

Others were taken with pinhole cameras or digitally: iPhone 11, Fuji X20 or Fuji X100F.

This panel contains some images that were part of the exhibition ‘Imagens Anunciadas’ (CPF 2007, on the travels of José Leite de Vasconcelos), two images published in the book ‘Fotografia do Douro: Arqueologia e Modernidade’ (as part of the 250th anniversary of the Douro Demarcated Region), one published in the book ‘O Porto e seus Fotógrafos’ (Porto Edition 2001), some from the exhibition The Way (as part of the webinar ‘Caminhos de Compostela: O Peregrino em Processo de Pa-

trimonialização’) and some from the exhibition ‘8 hours before’ (Quase Galeria, 2015). Other images appeared in books such as As paisagens do viajante (in the context of the 100th anniversary of José Saramago) and O Signo e a Paisagem (on the Estrada Nacional 2). Other images were included in other books or academic works, or were presented digitally during the pandemic years.

The framed colour images are part of the series Bloody Landscapes (CPF, 2018), which consisted of landscape photography in the area where the Battle of the Lys took place in April 1918.

The last two images, within a single frame, were taken with a panoramic pinhole camera; they are unpublished but will form part of a project I am currently developing.

Today, digital photography greatly facilitates the photographer’s tasks, but it does not solve the problems of the photographic gaze.

Augusto Lemos

THE QUESTION OF EMPTINESS

Conceição Magalhães

I photograph the space between life and death. I perceive the footsteps, the smells and the colours of life’s interactions, whilst, simultaneously,

I experience, in the near absence of light, the faint trace of the soul’s dust.

A nebula of dust and a thread of light allow me to see fragments of a being, in an almost liquid state, as if life had not ended there. Space changes and, with the mark of time, paradoxically, everything remains in place. And so it stays.

There remain, as in a mausoleum, the objects signifying the earthly passage, which acquire a new order and merge, creating a

close relationship on their surface, as an unalterable whole.

I peer through the possible gap and search. I am struck by the suggestions of rooms, staircases and doors that open, silent witnesses of time, indicating connections between different paths of past stories.

And I seek to understand ways of looking beyond my own, yet subject to the reality that reveals itself. Like an archaeologist, one interprets the different layers of time, creates rituals to ensure the veracity of the narrative that never ceases, and thus, relationships and fictions are formed, as if emotions, gestures and thoughts were gleaned through materialities.

And, though contingent, we are immortal; we carry within us the first stars, and so life is possible and perhaps necessary. Beyond the matter of which we are formed, the breath of life often remains.

Conceição Magalhães

Exhibition on view from 6 January to 17 February 2024

Curated by Manuela Matos Monteiro and João Lafuente

Assistant: Luísa Rosas da Silva