The exhibition “Three hundred and sixty-six”, by photographer João Mariano, which was on display at the end of last year at the Centro Cultural de Lagos, is nominated for the SPA|2019 Authors Award, in the category of Visual Arts – Best Exhibition of Photography.
The others nominated for this award from the Portuguese Society of Authors, in this category, are “Branco”, by Luísa Ferreira, at Galeria Monumental, in Lisbon, and “Geografia Dormente”, by Mónica de Miranda, at Galeria Municipal de Arte de Almada .
The Authors SPA Awards Gala |2019 will take place on March 27, at 21 pm at Centro Cultural de Belém and will be broadcast live on RTP30.
The exhibition was the result of a project by João Mariano, who lives and works in Aljezur, his parents' birthplace.
Every 366 days of a leap year, between January 1st and December 31st and between 8 am and 9 am, João Mariano took his camera and photographed the landscape of the floodplain that can be seen from his house, in Aljezur, always exactly the same angle. The photograph was always the same, you might think, but in reality it was always different.
Of these, about twenty black and white images – monochromatism is what João Mariano prefers for his more personal work – were on display at the Centro Cultural de Lagos, between mid-September and the end of December 2018.
The exercise of photographing every day, at the same time and with the same point of view, exactly the same thing, is not exactly original. João Mariano admitted, at the opening of the show, that he was inspired by a character from a film by Wayne Wang and Paul Auster. But your photos, these, are totally original and unique.
"In the movie Smoke, directed by Wayne Wang and Paul Auster (with the latter's screenplay), Augustus “Auggie” Wren (Harvey Keitel), works at Brooklyn Cigar Store and every day, at eight in the morning, he photographs his corner of Brooklyn (the corner of Third Street and Seventh Avenue), New York. He doesn't go on vacation, he doesn't go anywhere because of his hobby. When he shows the photographs, everyone tells him that they are the same… and he is highly indignant, as they are all, in his opinion, quite different. This project of mine has its great source of inspiration in it», explained the artist in the exhibition's catalogue.
This is, he added at the inauguration, “a project that aims to reflect on the infinite mutations of the landscape. A project about cycles. Cycles that tend to look identical and that visually can even get closer, be similar, but… never the same».
“It's also an exercise in the unrepeatable act of photographing. About ephemerality. It is a work that also calls for reflection on the passage of time (physical time, observation time, our time, the time of nature's cycles…), on the infinite differentiation and the triggering of the landscape changes caused by the elements'.
The twenty monochromatic photographs show all the enchantment of the landscape, the marks that the seasons of the year, the weather and agricultural work leave on it. And the most surprising perhaps is that opaque photo of a foggy morning.
João Mariano was born in Lisbon, in 1969, but his family roots are in Aljezur. During the last few years, he has dedicated special attention to the Portuguese SW, in particular to the area covered by the Costa Vicentina.
He has already published several books about this region. In 2014, he developed the project “The Known Unknown”, a very personal approach to the coast of the municipality of Lagoa and at the end of 2016 “Costa do Mar” was published, a large volume synthesis of his most personal projects developed in the extreme south of Portugal .
He has also been developing several other studies and essays that have been edited and exhibited all over the place.
Currently, in addition to dedicating himself to personal projects in the field of photography, he works as CEO and art director at 1000olhos, an Image and Communication agency, based in Aljezur, which he founded with his wife in 2001.
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