TELEGRAM BOOK

photography by

Filipe Casaca Nuno Direitinho

leaving and returning homeTELEGRAM

an exhibition curated by P4Photography

with a telegram from

António Júlio Duarte


photography by

Filipe Casaca Nuno Direitinho

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.

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

28

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.

29

Authorship

page 03 - t: Filipe Casaca; b: Nuno Direitinho

page 12 - Nuno Direitinho




page 20 - Filipe Casaca



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 . [email protected]

16 Navegantes St. 1200-731 Lisbon


TELEGRAM BOOK

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