Anne Holmes | COLOR ME NIGHT

Color me night, © Anne Holmes

A certain kind of magic happens when the sun goes down. Shadows play tricks on the imagination. Colours take on a new richness and depth. Forms become blurred, abstract, more painterly and mysterious. People simmer down and reveal themselves, angels becoming demons and demons becoming angels. Mythic creatures appear, and the line between what is safe and what you want, between madness and inspiration, becomes as nebulous as some of the resulting images. 

Obscurity lends itself to a kind of reverie. A threshold presents itself, daring you to cross it, to dream and to live as in a dream. This journal by night is an expression of that space where the infinite and the finite seem to mingle with ease - a space I often find myself in, plotting my own destiny. AH

For more information on the work and bio visit:

» Anne's site

» CAT - Paisagem estranha entranha

António Guerra

Vimeiro, © António Guerra, 2014

His photography transmits a surreal touch, at times nostalgic, that leads to the construction of scenes in a catharsis of emotions invoked by contemplation.
In paisagem estranha entranha, the author presents a group of work that considers if landscape results exclusively from looking, then it would be only what can be seen. But beyond the forms and volumes it is the emotion of strangeness aroused that makes for the difference in vision and feeling, that interiorizes the scene, then photographed.
February 2014. AG (excerpts).

For more information on his work for the Tavira show and his bio visit:
» CAT - Paisagem estranha entranha.

Armando Ribeiro | VAPOUR TRAIL

Vapour Trail, © Armando Ribeiro

"Life is like an ocean where our decisions make up for the continual tidal movements that make us fall in love, take on new projects, find new places or simply stay where we are.

Vapour Trail is a continual documentation of a personal voyage with no end in sight...

It is a diary where I record and store images of moments, places and persons that come into my life. It is the proof of my existence and passage through this world…" AR

For more information on the work and his bio visit:
» Armando's website
» CAT - Paisagem estranha entranha

Brett Van Ort | MINESCAPE

Minescape, © Brett Van Ort

"Minescape explores how nature temporarily reclaims the landscape, and injects fear back into the wilderness in the aftermath of a conflict, when underneath hides a most brutal and random killer: the land mine."
BVO

The work was presented as a multimedia presentation. For more information on his work for the Tavira show and his bio visit:
» Brett's website
» CAT - Paisagem estranha entranha.

Briony Campbell & Duncan Nicol Robertson | NEW WORLD

New World, © Briony Campbell &
Duncan Nicol Robertson 

Over the tenth anniversary of 9/11, we drove from Michigan to Louisiana, following a route determined not by a map but by the suggestions of strangers we met along the way. We asked them about their relationship with their country, the changes in their lives over the last decade, and their hopes and fears for the future. Through these conversations we traveled a new, unfamiliar American landscape: troubled by conflict at home and abroad, politically divided and economically uncertain.
BC & DNR

For more information on the work for the Tavira exhibition and bios visit:

» Briony's website

» Duncan's website

» CAT - Paisagem estranha entranha

Bruno Lopes

untitled, © Bruno Lopes

The small nucleus of photographs presented here in the context of the Paisagem estranha entranha exhibition, are part of a more extensive production in continual development, an attempt to think about human intervention on landscape, emphasizing models and resistances, latent instabilities of an imposed order, moments of counterposition between a planned perennial structuring of space and the ancestral and untamed freedom of a natural setting that rapidly incorporates and, gradually, reconverts. BL

For more information on the work for the Tavira exhibition and his bio visit:

» Bruno's bio
» CAT - Paisagem estranha entranha

Hin Chua | AFTER THE FALL

After the Fall, © Hin Chua

[...] It directs its gaze to the ongoing environmental struggle taking place on these boundaries, where the urban zoning system begins to blur and unravel. The photographs explore the effects of the conflicts and collisions that are gradually and chaotically reshaping the spaces around us, played out in slow motion with unpredictable, often disturbing results. They prefigure or anticipate change, they are pictures in which change is often either visible or completely within the mind.
This silent hand-over, the transformation of one environment into another, may speak to something deeper within our collective memories: the alteration of places we once knew, an inexorable reminder of the inevitability of time… a farewell to personal Edens. HC (excerpt)

For more information on his work and bio visit:
» Hin's site
» CAT - Paisagem estranha entranha

José Manuel Bacelar | MIRROR OF HEAVEN

Mirror of Heaven, © José Bacelar

The sea, the mirror of heaven, is the motto for a trip along the portuguese coast. Portugal´s relation with the sea fascinates me, puzzles me and it is in my soul... JB (excerpt)

For additional information on the work and photographer's bio visit:
» José Manuel's work at Dear Sir

José Paulo Ferro | PAISAGEM REVELADA

Paisagem revelada, © José Paulo Ferro

My first individual painting exhibition was entitled Regresso à Paisagem ("Return to landscape"), and it was dedicated to António Carneiro.
During the last years my work has once again turned towards landscape, and trees and clouds in particular. Laboratory work with its accidents and the desire to recicle photographic paper, led me to discover the "quimigramas" ("chemical-grams").
From the experiments carried out using brushes, hands and fingers (for digital results), I preferred the landscapes that resulted from the immersions of paper in developer. The result where chemistry, gesture and chance draw the landscape, is what I propose for this exhibition.
JPF (excerpts).

For more information on the work for the Tavira exhibition and his bio visit:
» CAT - Paisagem estranha entranha

Kim Haughtom | SHADOWLANDS

Shadowlands, © Kim Haughton

Shadowlands is a road-trip across post celtic- tiger Ireland’s graveyards of broken dreams. The photographs are a contemplation on life’s fragile hopes and the ephemeral nature of things. [...]

“And the long grass o'ertops the mouldering wall. And trembling, shrinking from the spoiler's hand, Far, far away, thy children leave the land.”

[...] The Irish poet Oliver Goldsmith wrote his epic poem “The Deserted Village” in 1770 about an Irish village once teeming with life and the vulnerability of that rural life to power and money. Yet, these words could have been written today. Two hundred and thirty years on, things have changed but they remain the same. KH

For more information on the work and bio visit:

» Kim's site
» CAT - Paisagem estranha entranha

Laura Hynd | LADY INTO HUT

Lady into hut series, © Laura Hynd

The hut sits quietly in the hills as the valley moves and sighs, but it sits with the effect of a monumental tomb. Defiant. Lavishing its influence, denying its love.
The hut encompasses a person. The overwhelming influence of this place and the loss of its creative patriarch are worked through and transformed into a new legacy through the experience of being and photographing a physical place.
Removed from civilisation to observe, to direct ones gaze. The act and state of looking transforms ones mental attitude or view. Reacting to and experiencing the movements, the sighs, the influence.
Lady into Hut is about transformation. Empirically being, photographing and becoming a place.

Transformation stories are the means by which we make sense of the world, how we see the connections that, ‘the materialization of our age’ misses, and they belong to the universe that is ordered, not by reason alone, but by imagination, a universe in which change is the only constant 

 John Burnside, foreword (2008), Lady into Fox by David Garnet. LR

For more information on the work and bio visit:

» Laura's site

Leonardo Wen | METABRASÍLIA

Metabrasília, © Leonardo Wen

Naked Brasília

Like people, cities only open up for those willing to see them. Leonardo Wen, born in Brasília, subverts the common ideas about the Brazilian capital, its modernist architecture and its urbanism. He shows a city of contradictions, captured by the eye of someone who knows it as few people do.There are signs, shadows, walls and trees. A city without heroes or monuments, living between light and darkness, through which people pass, sometimes without even noticing. A pulsating and alive place, unrecognisable at first glance, since the author avoids the obvious and disguises the well-known landmarks.Generously, Brasília has let itself be photographed and seen as if it was naked. These images reconstruct the atmosphere of the capital, and in doing this, pay the city an homage.

Simonetta Persichetti, Photography Critic

For more information on the work and bio visit:
» Leonardo's site

Margarida Dias | MD25

MD25, © Margarida Dias

[...]"It is almost inevitable to remember Alice who, lost in Wonderland, decifers enigmas, finds beauty and ugliness, good and bad, sanity and madness, running away from, and trying to find, herself in an immense and beautiful underground garden where, having to face many and unexpected adventures, she finds and explores capacities previously unknown to her.
Margarida Dias has always worked to simplify metaphors and enigmas, in no hurry. Her rabbit is not the White Rabbit who, with an enormous watch, led Alice to his burrow that would later reveal an unending tunnel that once passed, took her to a long corridor leading to an atrium surrounded by closed doors that impose on her choices as decisions." [...]

Excerpts from Entre a casa exterior e a casa interior by Ana Isabel Ribeiro.

For more information on the work and bio visit:
» Margarida's site

Maria Tomé | FROM SPACE

From Space, Maria Tomé

The orientation of the gaze, of looking, focus of attention, enable her to illuminate the object's unconscious, instead of following a more narrative route.  More than create, she chooses to "reveal" thus setting out an access route to her parallel vision of everyday. Marai Tomé stages her world with the instruments that surroun her: photographic cameras, scissors, x-acto knives, needles ... Always leaving room for chance, the fortuitous, her works submit themselves to these and bear this mark. 

For more information on the work and bio visit:

» CAT - Paisagem estranha entranha

Marta Covita | QUE PAISAGEM APAGARÁS

Que paisagem apagarás, @ Marta Covita

For more information on the work and bio visit:

» CAT - Paisagem estranha entranha

Marta Moreiras | FINIS TERRE

Finis Terre, © Marta Moreiras

End of a route, and beginning of another, Finis Terre is an emotional and atmospheric journey through scenes of the galician coastline, where the invisible becomes visible revealing that there is light in obscurity.

The Oporto version of Marta's work was displayed in light boxes. In Tavira it was presented in multimedia format.

For more information on the work and bio visit:
» Marta's site

» CAT - Paisagem estranha entranha

Miguel Proença | TERRA CINZA

Terra Cinza © Miguel Proença

The photographs of the abandoned (1964) São Domingos mine ruins take the absence of colour to the extreme of black and white, removing from that landscape, from those ruins, a dominating reason for amazement,  thus opening up the possibility for an alternative viewing experience, and also establishing an initial connection with the burnt hill ecology.

Representing the spatiality of the two situations - mine and hills - was also an important concern, and to this effect panoramic images (6 images, c. 150-180º view) were assembled and these views complemented by more tightly framed photographs. In the panoramic views, the viewpoint intentionally avoids dominating the landscape in order to provide various paths for the observer to follow, to be drawn, to be lured, and to “enter”. 

For this multimedia version of "Terra cinza" Armando Ribeiro re-edited the work, Pedro Gomes Marques selected David Shea's Giton's theme as music. David kindly contributed the use of his music to the multimedia presentation. I still recognize the initial photo work, but here the photographs gain an unspeakable dimension, an autonomy and a plasticity beyond description. What a collaboration, thank you!

» Miguel Proença - Terra Cinza

Natasha Revez | WONDERSCAPE

Wonderscape, © Natasha Revez

Wonderscape is a plotless story about stunning encounters with the Ria Formosa and the beings that inhabit therein.


I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is 'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle!

Lewis Carroll

For more information on the work and bio visit:

» CAT - Paisagem estranha entranha

Nick Rochowski & Tim Bowditch | HIND LAND

Hind Land, © Nick Rochowski & Tim Bowditch

Hind Land is a collaborative work by photographers Nick Rochowski and Tim Bowditch, surveying the pedestrian walkways beneath London’s Orbital M25 motorway. Since it’s completion 25 years ago the M25 has dramatically changed the landscape of the surrounding area and come to define the boundary of the city.

We are fascinated by the voids left by the motorway as it carves through the landscape. The road divides the countryside in two, leaving a visible and audible rip in the environment above the ground, and a no-man's land beneath.

We aim to survey these voids at night, using an Achromatic Digital Back capable of creating wide spectrum black and white images, a technology often used for aerial surveillance, as it is able to record the visible as well as the infrared and ultraviolet parts of the spectrum.  NR & TB (excerpts).

For more information on the work and bio visit:

» CAT - Paisagem estranha entranha

» Nick's site
» Tim's site

Paula Ferro | OLHAR REVOLTO

Olhar revolto, © Paula Ferro

Sight
open to amazement
throws itself upon the everyday places


revolves itself
looking for the new


Hidden portals in the corner of seeing, open up to other readings on life, in the same space.*

* free translation of:

o olharaberto ao pasmoatira-se aos lugares de sempre
revolve o mesmobusca novidade 
Portais escondidos nos recantos do ver, abrem caminhos para outras interpretações da vida, no mesmo espaço. PF

For more information on the work and bio visit:

» CAT - Paisagem estranha entranha
* note on translation: Olhar Revolto can be translated as Revolved Eye