The Museum of Portimão has just been awarded the Special Mention, due to the temporary exhibition “Special Edition Covid-19 – Photographic Race of Portimão”, at the annual awards ceremony of the APOM – Portuguese Association of Museology, which took place this Friday Thursday, October 29, at the Museu de Marinha, in Lisbon.
The temporary exhibition now distinguished by APOM, the entity that awards the Portimão Museum for the fifth time, represented «a pioneering initiative in the context of an unexpected and difficult pandemic context, transversal to all areas of society, namely the cultural sector, with profound negative impact in the case of museums, especially in their relationship with visiting audiences and communities», explains the Museum.
Sample, which ran from 12 December 2020 to 27 June, gathered the best works of the 20th edition of the Portimão Photographic Race, inspired by the profound impact the pandemic had on the community and which challenged participants to upload their images online, which allowed for greater adhesion and interaction in full confinement.
“Strange Times”, “Signs of Distance”, “Places of Hope” and “Solidarity” were the four themes that challenged the creativity of photographers, in a difficult historical and social moment, which constituted an important contribution in the collection of testimonies of the present , for future memory.
As the individual involvement of the usually large group of participants is not possible in person, in a competition traditionally limited to the territory of the municipality of Portimão, one of the main objectives of the 2020 edition of the Photographic Race was to design an alternative to maintain the desirable personal connection to a museological activity that always sought to motivate, through photographic recording, the collection of cultural heritage themes, promoting a more contemporary reading of the social environment of its time.
The resulting exhibition brought together the works considered by the jury as the winners and the best photographs of the proposed themes, from a set of images submitted by 138 participants of ten nationalities, from 25 cities.
In addition to direct and in-person access to the temporary exhibition room during the periods allowed after the end of the various confinements, the exhibition can be accessed online at Portimão Museum website, by clicking here.
This year, Hope was the central theme of the 21st Photographic Race in Portimão, which in 2021, and for the second consecutive year, returned to the non-attendance format. The competing works are currently being evaluated by the jury, so that the exhibition can open in December, as part of the Portimão municipal holiday.
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