Oblivion is the disease of memory. As Paul Ricoeur points out, remembering is a form of labour and a duty of memory.
Photography, in its essence, is an aid memoire. Whenever we gaze upon images, we are overwhelmed by a whirlwind of seemingly forgotten sensations. Photography serves this process of remembrance and anamnesis effectively, allowing us to update our vision of the past and preventing images from crystallising it. While this memorial aspect of Photography is essential for understanding its evocative and even transformative power, it is equally important to acknowledge the evolution of Photography from the 1970s to the present day. It is worth noting that within the context of the early Modernist Avant-Garde movements, Photography significantly diverged from its social origins and became crucial in many visual experiments during the Constructivist period and early Surrealism.
Photography liberated itself from its social function from the 1970s onwards, coexisting with the emergence of the second Avant-Garde movement of the 20th century. At this point, it began to be instrumentalised for practices requiring a lasting medium, such as Performance and Happenings, or, in a more vernacular sense, to express issues subject to sociological or anthropological reception.
What is certain is that its importance and freshness emerged within the artistic field, particularly in the realms of the theatricality and fiction. We therefore consider that the starting point for Contemporary Photography lies in this period, with many of the authors who began their careers at that time still actively producing work today.
The students’ practical work, which constitutes 75% of their final assessment, is developed over the semester within the framework of two projects. The first focuses on self-portrait, while the second revolves around the idea of appropriation or, alternatively, the development of a visual narrative.
Despite its autobiographical definition and affiliation with Art History, self-portrait is understood broadly and diversely. It is always a poetic point of view (that which lies beyond the real), the “self” as “other”, transforming Photography into a field of narrative expression. In the second project, the methodology of appropriation is based on the idea that appropriationist methods define the paradigm of contemporary creation, aligned with acquiring knowledge as the starting point for all learning. The alternative second project fits within a broad field, which can be called domestic or private narratives, favouring a sequential organisation (however paratactic it may be) and the coexistence of images with a relational dynamic that enhances their connection more than the individual value of each image.
Eva Postica’s self-portrait work embodies a refined poetic directness but also reflects the strangeness of places, adopting a critical stance in self-representation. Margaux Mazure’s photographs, also in the field of self-representation, possess an atmosphere akin to photo-performance, influenced by modern experiments from Man Ray to André Kertész. Ricardo Almeida’s self-portraits should be viewed as critical gestures of self-representation in suburban public spaces. However, they reveal a very intense chromatic and constructive density that favours the fusion of figure and background.
Salomé Monteiro’s appropriation project begins with Jeff Wall’s photograph Insomnia, making a radical shift from the original setting to a public garden. By stripping the work of its depressive character, she updates the everyday gestures and postures of idle life in the garden and daytime sleep.
Finally, Sofia Pratas Morais’ work holds narrative potential, wandering through urban spaces that close off to the photographic lens through compositional choices that hint at hesitant exits and reveal a familiar strangeness.
Departamento de Arquitetura e Departamento de Engenharia Informática, Faculdade Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade de Coimbra