Post on 30-Mar-2016
description
photography by
Filipe Casaca Nuno Direitinho
leaving and returning homeTELEGRAM
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an exhibition curated by P4Photography
with a telegram from
António Júlio Duarte
leaving and returning homeTELEGRAM
photography by
Filipe Casaca Nuno Direitinho
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The first thing God created was the journey; then came doubt and
nostalgia. With this sentence, Theo Angelopoulos summarizes one
of the founding epics of western civilization. With the Trojan
War over, Ulysses was ready to return to Ithaca but a sequence
of unexpected events kept him away from home for another ten
years. After many stops and incidents, Ulysses reached Ogygia
island. There he became Calypso’s lover and her prisoner.
Despite promises of eternal life, despite being attracted to
Calypso, and even though he happily shared her bed, Ulysses
never forgot Ithaca and mourned every day for his lost home
and family. After seven years of confinement, not yet convinced
of Calypso’s love and by Ogygia’s vita beata, Ulysses was free
to leave the island and return to Ithaca. Between a pleasant
life at Ogygia and a dangerous journey back home, Ulysses
chose home. As Milan Kundera wrote, Instead of the passionate
exploration of the unknown (the adventure), he preferred the
apotheosis of the familiar (the return). Instead of the infinite
(because any adventure is supposed to go on forever), he
preferred the end (because returning home is a reconciliation
with life’s finitude).
Leaving and returning home by P4Photography
When Francis Frith captured the exotic ambience of Middle East
lands in his celebrated albumen prints, the journey became one
of photography’s central themes. If the portrait was sought
as a way of keeping and remembering the faces of loved ones
(or simply lost youth), travel photos were artefacts that
astonished the cosmopolitan citizens of the world centers
of the photographic art: London, Paris, New York, Boston.
In some countries, due to their geographic situation, history
and culture, photographers engaged more seriously with the
journey’s theme. English photographers like Frith took
advantage of their country’s presence in the Middle East to
record powerful images of the mythical civilizations that had
flourished on the rich eastern Mediterranean lands. The United
States, with its overwhelming and wild open spaces, saw the
birth of landscape photography, via the eyes of such artists
as Carleton E. Watkins, Timothy O’Sullivan or the Portuguese
jew Solomon Nunes de Carvalho, amongst many others. (Later
Ansel Adams reclaimed those pioneers’ inheritance). In the
20th century, Walker Evans, Robert Frank and Lee Friedlander
followed the same trails, but this time they did it by car.
Finally, if there is such a thing as a Portuguese photography,
the journey is undoubtedly its core.
Filipe Casaca and Nuno Direitinho belong to a generation that
grew up in an age when travelling is no longer a luxury, but
became another middle-class conquest, instead. The world has
become smaller: everyone is connected by broadband internet
and mobile phones. Remote places became easily accessible and
Ulysses’ anxiety and long journey back home do not make sense
any longer. Homesickness, nostalgia, saudade: these feelings
have not vanished from humanity’s soul; but they are now more
easily appeased.
Does this mean that the journey that began in the sands of
Egypt is over? Maybe it is over or maybe not. The two defining
pictures of the pyramids in Paulo Nozolino’s Penumbra show that
the world is infinite and that only the spectators’ imagination
and creativity may end.
Photography has not returned home. It is just the concept of
home and private space that has expanded their limits. Telegram
moves along this blurred borderline, showing us not only the
dialogue between the authors’ images, but also their engagement
with this contemporary and broad sense of home.
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Telegram
These photographs are images of our time.
Robert Frank’s road does not lead us anywhere.
The journey is over.
Every place looks alike.
Every gesture is the same.
Welcome to triviality.
There is no way out and no redemption.
This world is all we got.
It’s just a shadow.
Lisbon, December 27th, 2007
António Júlio Duarte
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Filipe Casaca was born in Barreiro, Portugal in 1983. He studied Fine Arts (Scuplture) at Faculdade de Belas-Artes,
in Lisbon, from 2001 to 2006. In 2006 and 2007 he studied
photography at Instituto Português de Fotografia under the
orientation of António Júlio Duarte.
Nuno Direitinho was born in Lisbon in 1981. From 2005 to 2007 he studied photography at Instituto Português de
Fotografia under the orientation of António Júlio Duarte.
Recently, he participated in the exhibition 5 novos
fotógrafos at Kgaleria, in Lisbon.
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Authorship
page 03 - t: Filipe Casaca; b: Nuno Direitinho
page 12 - Nuno Direitinho
page 15 - t: Filipe Casaca; b: Nuno Direitinho
page 17 - t: Filipe Casaca; b: Nuno Direitinho
page 19 - t: Filipe Casaca; b: Nuno Direitinho
page 20 - Filipe Casaca
page 23 - t: Filipe Casaca; b: Nuno Direitinho
page 25 - t: Filipe Casaca; b: Nuno Direitinho
page 26 - Nuno Direitinho
page 27 - Filipe Casaca
published by P4Photography
design by Luís Trindade and Bruno Rego
photography by Filipe Casaca and Nuno Direitinho
exhibition curated by P4Photography
telegram from António Júlio Duarte
text by Carlos M. Fernandes
acknowledgments Jorge Calado
first edition 50 numbered books
copyright authors / P4Photography
director Luís Trindade
www.p4photography.com . info@p4photography.com
16 Navegantes St. 1200-731 Lisbon
leaving and returning homeTELEGRAM