FPM #6 | contrast: 1949–2024 — Photography in the PLMJ Foundation´s Collection: Aesthetic Distance in Photography

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DATE

16 Feb 2026

AUTHOR

Ayşenur Tanrıverdi

FPM #6 | contrast: 1949–2024 — Photography in the PLMJ Foundation´s Collection: Aesthetic Distance in Photography

AUTHOR

Ayşenur Tanrıverdi

“Curated by writer and curator João Silvério, FPM #6 | contrast: 1949–2024 — Photography in the PLMJ Foundation´s Collection brings together digital and analogue prints through a carefully constructed narrative that focuses on the individual story of each work. Shaped by its ties to the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP), the collection reveals how emotions shared across different times and places in history can come together into a shared aesthetic value.”

Photography exhibitions have always held a particular appeal for me, for two main reasons. In this technical age, where we are surrounded by images, I find myself in need of the aesthetic distance that photographs can still offer. The sense of unattainability conveyed by a strong photograph accompanies, in a way, the reawakening of visual sensitivity that has grown numb.

The second reason lies in my perception of the act of taking a photograph as a form of artistic performance. The artist’s eye, operating behind a mechanism that fixes an image, marks a clear shift from the material to the abstract. In this sense, the photographic act moves beyond passive observation and becomes an active gesture.

Curated by writer and curator João Silvério, FPM #6 | contrast: 1949–2024 — Photography in the PLMJ Foundation´s Collection brings together digital and analogue prints through a carefully constructed narrative that focuses on the individual story of each work. Shaped by its ties to the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP), the collection reveals how emotions shared across different times and places in history can come together into a shared aesthetic value.

The venue of the exhibition, the FPM 41 Tower, rises within Lisbon’s intricate urban fabric like an unusual, vertical abstract form, serving as a prelude to the exhibition’s title, contrast. The contact with the photographs in an interior design environment that maintains a certain distance from the city, together with the PLMJ Foundation's philosophy of collecting, where photography constitutes more than fifty percent of the collection, makes it possible to create a space in which the works can be fully experienced.

The exhibition’s sole video work, Maimuna Adam’s Fazer a Mala, examines an endless arrangement of items inside a small, locked suitcase. Are these items memories, legacies, burdens, or coping mechanisms for displaced people? In this perpetual arrangement, no “final” conclusion is possible; it is only the act of arranging itself that carries meaning and significance. These endlessly arising objects stand against the dematerialized digital age, while claiming the continuity of tradition.

French urbanist and philosopher Paul Virilio likens the “field of vision” to an archaeological dig. The work by Portuguese photographer Augusto Alves da Silva at the entrance of the exhibition, a view from Japan Untitled (da série Passage), draws the viewer into an archaeological gaze. Amid the chaos organized by orange and yellow highway markings, it even seems as if no one is paying attention to or caring about the movement, yet there is a longing for absolute order.

In Maria do Carmo Galvão Telles’s 1984 Untitled photograph, an elegant portrait of the Portuguese painter Maria Helena Vieira da Silva appears, with round-framed glasses and a hand lightly resting near the corner of her mouth, as if preparing to tell a story. The objects on the table and the lady’s face glow under a beautiful chiaroscuro effect. In this liminal space of memory, I am reminded of Samuel Beckett’s reflections on making the unsayable sayable: “the necessity to narrate, despite there being nothing to tell, no way to tell it, and no power or desire to tell it".

Accompanying the necessity to narrate is silence, not a noisy outburst, but a quiet presence. Victor Palla e Costa Martins’s Untitled (da série Lisboa, Cidade Triste e Alegre) reminds us that it is enough to simply look around on a calm afternoon while walking the streets. In daylight, we see women smiling through the weariness of work, with a subtle sadness melting into their smiles.

The exhibition also offers an unusual experience by positioning the viewer in two overlapping roles: observer and spectator.

Gérard Castello-Lopes’s Portugal evokes a profound sense of lament through a massive rock in the middle of the ocean. As I look at the giant stone, which seems to hover in the air, I find myself wanting to believe fully in this illusion.

In Tito Mouraz’s Casa das Sete Senhoras series, installed in glass-walled meeting spaces, a sort of “unreliable narrator” technique as described by literary critic Wayne C. Booth, can be seen, offering viewers an uncanny pleasure. The dramatic contrasts of black-and-white shades, the dreamlike image of two white swans in succession, and the forest motif heighten our curiosity to follow what the image is about to reveal.

In her book On Photography, Susan Sontag writes: “People robbed of their past seem to make the most fervent picture takers, at home and abroad.” As a recording device, photography functions as a voice, a proof of existence.

Manuel Botelho’s 67.emb (da série Confidencial/Desclassificado: Emboscada) presents a man in military attire, carrying a rifle on his shoulder, confronting his own civilian reflection. Though the two figures reach out toward each other, they neither fully connect nor separate. The work strikingly illustrates the destructive impact of war on the human psyche and how life becomes entangled in invisible webs of struggle. We can sense this in the deep glances of a person looking back at us over their shoulders in Moira Forjaz’s 1983 work, 4º Congresso da FRELIMO, shot in Maputo.

Daniel Blaufuks’s Untitled (da série Hiato) shows a large-scale view that embodies the tension between the ephemeral and the permanent. Amid a desolate scene with endless viaducts stretching into the distance, the reflection of a solitary man sitting alone in a room points to a dual perspective, both gaze and reflection. A man detached from history, simply pushed to the margins like a remnant of time, much like Camus’s Meursault.

In The Arcades Project, Walter Benjamin speaks of the photographer as a materialist historian. In a sense, photographs create a “pre-history” and serve as key witnesses to how the present turns into memory. Whether a photograph symbolizes defeat or triumph is irrelevant; what stands before us is an image that sparks thought in the mind and always remains open to interpretation.

In André Cepeda’s Untitled (da série Depois) - one of the works that personally affected me most in the exhibition - the two empty chairs beside a white, round table create a brilliant play of light and shadow. The photograph stands as an impressive example of how the world can be represented in a “plain, framed, and measured” way. It provides just enough space for the sparks Benjamin describes to ignite in the viewer’s mind.

In their own way, all the works in the exhibition restore the simple pleasure of seeing and offer a form of transcendent visual quality that is increasingly rare today.

FPM #6 | contrast: 1949–2024 — Photography in the PLMJ Foundation´s Collection can be visited by appointment at the PLMJ Foundation until June 4, 2026.

The exhibition includes works by: Albano Silva Pereira, Alfredo Cunha, Ana Janeiro, André Cepeda, António Júlio Duarte, António Sena da Silva, Augusto Alves da Silva, Augusto Brázio, Bruno Sequeira, Carlos Lobo, Cláudio Melo, Daniel Blaufuks, Dora Nogueira, Eurico Lino do Vale, Fernando Lemos, Gérard Castello-Lopes, Inês Gonçalves, João Penalva, Jorge Guerra, Jorge Molder, José Luís Neto, José Pedro Cortes, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Luís Pavão, Maimuna Adam, Manuel Botelho, Maria do Carmo Galvão Telles, Mauro Pinto, Moira Forjaz, Noé Sendas, Nuno Calvet, Nuno Cera, Patrícia Assis, Paulo Catrica, Paulo Nozolino, Rita Barros, Tito Mouraz, Valter Vinagre, Victor Palla e Costa Martins.

BIOGRAPHY

Ayşenur Tanrıverdi is an Istanbul-based writer, living in Lisbon since September 2022. She studied at Istanbul University and is the author of two published works of literary fiction. A regular contributor to Cumhuriyet, a major Turkish newspaper, where she focuses on Portuguese culture. Her essays and critical texts on theatre, literature, and contemporary art have also been featured in various art magazines.

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