PAINT AND DUST. TRAVEL PHOTOGRAPHIES

The work which lays the ground for these words is photographic in nature, situated between documentary and interpretive or artistic styles. The boundary between these styles can be very tenuous. However, they grow out of documentary principles that stem from an eagerness to cover an extensive territory, namely Portuguese space. This record is double-sided, and it cannot avoid an aestheticization of the visible - an irresistible appeal, which is perhaps an ontological invitation. This text reflects on the practice of landscape photography, depicting territory, space. It represents nearly 30 years of photographic surveys, more than 1.35 million images taken in over 435,000 miles of Portuguese territory. A growing number of images gave rise to a vast archive that has taken on a life of its own, and from which renewed and revisited readings of the places photographed in the past have stemmed. The complex web of relationships between spatial reality and its representation in photography materializes in various media, exhibitions and publishing projects.