Galeria de Santa Maria Maior / espaço Chiado
Rua Serpa Pinto 2, 1200-444 Lisboa
3ª a sáb. - 15:00 > 20:00
28/09 - 28/10/2023
Bruno Silva
BRUNO SILVA
Estruturas de fusión
“The headlong stream is termed violent. But the riverbed hemming it in is termed violent by no one.”
― Bertolt Brecht
Pego Negro is an all but forgotten locality in the city of Porto. It is crossed by the river Tinto, a small stream about 10 km long that flows into the river Douro.
In recent decades, part of the river was buried due to urban sprawl, and a series of environmental crimes have turned Rio Tinto into one of the most polluted rivers in the north of Portugal.
By using the polluted river water in the film developing process for some of the black & white photographs, the project aims to draw a relationship between the impact of pollution and the photographic medium itself. This is done in parallel with the exploration and mapping of the territory using an approach that is based on interpretation more than illustration.
Pego Negro is about the intensive as opposed to the extensive. It’s about a small territory in the outskirts of the city and the progressive erosion of its identity over time.
Pego Negro is a starting point rather than an end in itself. It is also about place memory and my own experience, about photography as medium and about how different photographic practices affect our visual perception.
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