The editorial content curated under the theme Exploring Contemporary Realities represents the core of scopio Magazine AAI’s second volume in its continuous publication format. This issue stems from an open call launched with the SCOPIO & CONTRAST International Conference, which will establish a new and dynamic collaboration with the Contrast: Multidisciplinary Network of Artistic Initiatives in Art, Architecture, Design and Photography. The Open Call and resulting volume were shaped by a diverse editorial team of academics and artists affiliated with scopio Magazine AAI and the Contrast project. This team ensured a rigorous peer-review process via the U. Porto Open Journal System platform.
Scopio Magazine AAI has moved now to a continuous publication model reflecting a strategic response to the evolving open access publishing landscape, moving beyond the constraints of traditional print cycles. This transition facilitates faster dissemination of scholarly work, enabling timely access to research outputs and enhancing visibility and impact for contributing authors.
Under this new model, accepted submissions are made available online on a rolling basis following peer review and open commentary. Once the volume is complete, all contributions are compiled with traditional pagination, forming a cohesive annual issue. This flexible structure fosters greater engagement with individual works while maintaining academic rigour and editorial coherence.
The central theme Exploring Contemporary Realities engages with photography and other visual media as instruments of artistic research, documentation, and critical analysis. It examines how diverse disciplinary and cultural perspectives interpret, represent, and transform physical environments and how these environments, in turn, shape human practices and worldviews. The complex intersections between culture and space are of particular concern, as well as how landscapes, cities, and architectures are simultaneously produced and interpreted through visual practice.
The project acknowledges the increasing urgency of documenting the impermanence and transformation of space—prompted by phenomena such as urban gentrification and global health crises—which has led to the emergence of novel visual narratives and previously unimaginable representations. Here, artistic and documentary practices within the expanded fields of architecture, art, and design investigate the experience of place across multiple scales and layers of public and private life, while engaging broader sociocultural, political, historical, and technological contexts.
Recognising the image as a visual language that traverses geographies and cultural boundaries, Exploring Contemporary Realities encourages a dialogue between diverse visual perspectives and localised cultural identities. The specificity of place becomes a critical entry point for understanding contemporary societies and their evolving territories. The objective is to foster the creation of visual and artistic projects that offer critical reflections on the transformation of the built and inhabited environment—projects that use the image not only as a representational tool but as a mode of knowledge production.
In essence, the initiative affirms the centrality of photography as a privileged medium for exploring the boundaries between document and fiction, reproduction and manipulation, analogue and digital processes. It seeks to harness the image as a transversal and interdisciplinary language, enriching the discourse on architecture, urbanism, and landscape, while contributing to the construction of shared imaginaries and expanded critical knowledge.