“At the turn of the century and for little more than a decade, life led me to the lands of Douro and Trás-os-Montes in Northeast Portugal, where I ended up living and working. This triggered a process of introspection, questioning certainties increasingly more accommodated in this flat world. And so the city distanced beyond the horizon, and myself.”

“With the title taken from a popular expression from the Douro and Trás-os-Montes in Portugal Northeast region, the work recounts a journey amongst the people rooted in the land that sustains its hunger, and devoted in the faith that points them towards the skies. Firstly with photography and extending into vídeo, the final result tries to be a visual metaphor on contemporaneity taken from a premise and perspective of the rural space: While road works and river damns gain ground over nature, Man persists on a fading and enduring coexistence with the environment, honouring a past creased by physical and spiritual effort and rigor, in contrast to a present where it seems to dominate a culture of both moral formatting and exaltation. A culture in a merciless confrontation with new social and economic realities, in a last instance, it´s a reflection on the human condition based on three vertices: the relationship with Land, Faith and Progress.”

About the author:
Born (1975) and raised in Porto, Portugal, having completed his photography degree in the U.K. in the late 90´s, João has developed along the years a work within the grounds of documentary photography while using it towards a means of personal exploration. Extending his tools of trade from still into moving image, his approach intents to be an intimate exercise of consciousness, with his projects reflecting on issues of identity and the human condition within an environmental and sociological perspective.

Author: Alexandra Curvelo.
Publisher: Âncora Editora, Museu do Douro
Language: Bilingual Portuguese / English.
Pages: 170, hardcover.
Size: 18 x 24 x 2,3 cm.
Weight: 750 g.