Intimate Distance, Uncaptured City, Edson Chagas
Curadoria de Ana Balona de Oliveira
Em Intimate Distance, Uncaptured City, Edson Chagas apresenta vários corpos de trabalho desenvolvidos ao longo das duas últimas décadas: Found Not Taken (2008-2014, Londres, Newport, Luanda), Archives of Absence: Involuntary Images (2019, Namibe), e Common Walls (2022-2024, Lisboa, Brescia). A exposição coloca em diálogo séries fotográficas formalmente muito distintas que, contudo, se aproximam conceptualmente. Através delas, o fotógrafo tem refletido não só sobre o próprio meio fotográfico, as possibilidades imaginativas e afetivas da fotografia e os limites do documental, mas também sobre a experiência corpórea e emocional, física e psíquica, de habitar os espaços urbanos que têm marcado a sua biografia. Através de várias estratégias de abstração, as obras evocam diferentes modos de habitar Luanda (onde nasceu, viveu e aonde continua a regressar), Lisboa, Londres e Newport (cidades onde viveu e estudou fotografia), assim como frequentes passagens pela cidade do Namibe, no sul de Angola, e pela cidade de Brescia, no norte de Itália.
Tais modos de habitar e se deslocar entre cidades a Norte e a Sul implicaram, ao longo do tempo, experiências múltiplas de partida, chegada, permanência e regresso, e processos de construção e desconstrução de novas e antigas familiaridades. A experiência diaspórica e migratória com frequência tornou distante o que era íntimo (sem, contudo, apagar a intimidade), transformando em íntimo o que era distante (sem, contudo, anular a inescapável distância). Consequentemente, o olhar fotográfico de Chagas e, em particular, das séries que compõem esta exposição evidencia a complexidade afetiva de tais experiências, da sua memória, e da sua representação visual e fotográfica. A exposição revela a opacidade inerente à recusa da cidade em deixar-se capturar e à recusa do fotógrafo em procurar tal captura.
Edson Chagas, Found Not Taken, London, 2014
EN
In Intimate Distance, Uncaptured City, Edson Chagas presents several bodies of work developed over the last two decades: Found Not Taken (2008–2014, London, Newport, Luanda), Archives of Absence: Involuntary Images (2019, Namibe), and Common Walls (2022–2024, Lisbon, Brescia). The exhibition brings into dialogue photographic series that are formally very distinct yet closely related conceptually. Through them, the photographer has reflected not only on the medium of photography itself, its imaginative and affective possibilities and the limits of the documentary, but also on the bodily and emotional, physical and psychic experience of inhabiting the urban spaces that have shaped his life. Through various strategies of abstraction, the works evoke different ways of inhabiting Luanda (the city where he was born, lived and to which he continues to return), Lisbon, London and Newport (cities where he lived and studied photography), as well as frequent visits to the city of Namibe, in southern Angola, and the city of Brescia, in northern Italy.
Over time, such ways of living and moving between cities in the North and South have entailed multiple experiences of departure, arrival, permanence and return, as well as the construction and deconstruction of new and old forms of familiarity. The diasporic and migratory experience has frequently distanced what was once intimate (without, however, erasing that intimacy), while making intimate what was once distant (without, however, negating the inescapable distance). Consequently, Chagas’ photographic gaze – particularly the one shaping the series in this exhibition – highlights the emotional complexity of such experiences, of their memory, and of their visual and photographic representation. The exhibition reveals the opacity inherent in the city’s refusal to allow itself to be captured and in the photographer’s refusal to seek such capture.
