Lapa Do Lobo
Various Artists
Fundação Lapa do Lobo
Spanish, English
Text by Carlos Cunha Torres and Rui Prata.
Contributing artists included José Pedro Cortes, André Cepeda , Tito Mouraz, José Bacelar, Ângela Berlinde and Paulo Catrica.
Softcover
182 pages
235 x 330 mm
2013
ISBN 9789899816312
In its origin, the inventive process of photography comprised a collection of passions and discoveries which, put together, provide a record of memories that are closer to reality. Lapa Do Lobo project is contiguous to that photographic ontology: each of the authors devises and displays the space memorised by each shot. The outcome is a plural vision from every author, who shares moments of synthesis of personal information and visual culture with the observer. Thus, the physical existence of Lapa Do Lobo village is mapped out by fractioned and subjective observations, distant from postcard or tourist archives. Each of the authors subdues space, leading the viewer to read every image in a way he had never thought possible before.
In the words of the well known philosopher Walter Benjamin, “the urge to bring things closer, both spatially and humanely became an obsession nowadays, just like the tendency to deny the unique or ephemeral character of an event by freezing it by using photography. There is an increasingly intense urge to reproduce an object in close-up…” This statement from the late thirties has become more up-to-date with the advent, popularity and amount of digital capture, revealing a voracious recording of the moment by means of photography. Photographing has become as commonplace as breathing.
More recently, Vítor Burgin claims that “Spending a whole day without watching a photograph is as bizarre as spending a day without seeing something written.” Within diverse institutional frameworks – press, family pictures, advertising boards, and so on, photographs invade the environment, simplifying learning/reflection/inflection of what we “take for granted”.
Therefore, photographic image inhabits our everyday life and nearly blinds us or else makes us oblivious to its content. The greatest asset of this project, besides composing a memory for the future, is managing to focus our attention on a nucleus of images which globally highlight the relevance of photographic registry using a systematic approach. […] The photographic orders and the resulting territorial mapping are almost contemporary to the discovery of photography. In Portugal, alas, such practice has been very rare, and therefore the project of Lapa do Lobo is an example to follow.
(source: https://josefchladek.com/book/lapa_do_lobo_-_jose_pedro_cortes_andre_cepeda_tito_mouraz_jose_bacelar_angela_berlinde_paulo_catrica)
About the Publisher
Fundação Lapa do Lobo is a private nonprofit, with fundamentally cultural objectives including education and heritage preservation. Its area of influence focuses on the people and the heritage of Lapa do Lobo, generally covering the municipalities of Nelas and Carregal do Sal.
(soure not available online)
