Arquivo Municipal de Lisboa - Fotográfico

Rua da Palma 246, 1100-394 Lisboa

Inauguration → 15 . 10 . 2025 → 06:00 pm

16 . 10 . 2025 → 21 . 02 . 2026

monday - saturday → 10:00 am – 06:00 pm

Curated by

Filipe Ribeiro e Sofia Castro

Artist

Pedro Medeiros

The complex themes of isolation and silence within prison spaces have historically been central to the search for a model of punishment and control, through which the Portuguese judicial system— following the example of other Western legal systems—believed it was possible to bring about in the convicted individual a process of deep introspection and moral transformation, enabling behavioral change, repentance, and rehabilitation.

Photographer Pedro Medeiros’s interest in this subject started in 1999, during a work trip to the National Archive of Cape Verde / Institute of Historical Archives on the island of Santiago, when he decided to visit the Tarrafal Concentration Camp.

The impression and shock he experienced there led to the development of a long- -term exploration of the theme of Political Prisons under the Estado Novo regime, a project he worked on until 2006, which culminated in the exhibition and book Voice of Silence – Portuguese Political Prisons. (…)

Subject to interruptions and restrictions due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the project entered a second phase, from 2022 to this day, in which the author continued the earlier work—now beyond the “physical dimension” of the prison—creating new photographic prints that are featured in the current exhibition at the Lisbon Municipal Archive | Photography. The exhibition offers access to a space that is normally hidden from view, a space where architecture assumes a silent and disciplinary protagonism, suspended in a time that runs parallel to our own, and composed of complex relationships of surveillance and power, between body, place, and society, inviting us to reflect upon it.

Filipe Ribeiro