Amílcar da Encarnação, now 67 years old, “he would have been around 37, 38 years old, he wasn't anymore”, when the photograph attached to which he is posing, and which he had never seen, was taken. The image, in black and white, is part of the collection of the Museum of Portimão and shows Mr. Amílcar and his boss, at the Minerva do Comércio Printing Office, which still works today.
«Let's make some invoices, some invitations. But there is less and less work, now it's all electronic, by computer», says Mr Amílcar. Pointing to the photo, he says: «I still have this machine here, I continue to work with it. The other one was here a long time ago to a museum in Faro, it was João Soares who came here to ask me. I no longer used it either».
In large-scale photography, Máximo Xavier also appears, with his back turned, who was a master of typography and later its owner, having already passed away.
This is just one of the many large photographs in the open-air exhibition «Walking through the History of Ancient Professions», the fifth in a series promoted by the Group of Friends of the Portimão Museum (GAMP), in collaboration with the Museum itself, the Parish Council and the municipality of Portimão.
But it is, above all, a photograph that shows that even the past preserved in a museum can be continued in the present, with people of flesh and blood, like Senhor Amílcar.
The exhibition, mounted on large panels at Praça Manuel Teixeira Gomes, next to the city's riverside area, talks about caulkers and maritime carpenters, fishermen and canning workers, ropers, farriers, fishmongers, shellfish collectors, drivers of Rocha vans, tinsmiths, water workers, market sellers, grocers and sweets. They are, in many cases, professions that have already disappeared, recalling other times, of suffering lives and hard work, but also referring to times when Portimão had much more economy than the ubiquitous tourism of today.
The exhibition is free to visit and can be seen until the 19th of September.
Photos: Elisabete Rodrigues | Sul Informação
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