Photography
Valter Vinagre
Valter Vinagre brings together in Homen morto passou aqui (The dead man passed through here) a collection of around fifty photographic landscapes taken throughout Portugal and linked to episodes from the Peninsular War (1807-1814), which pitted Portuguese and British troops against Napoleon’s French army during his three attempts to invade Portuguese territory.
The photographer became a historian, finding in the archives the precise locations and dates of the advance of Napoleon’s armies, information that he used as a protocol to set up his camera at the exact location at the presumed time.
Instead of focusing on the symbols and historical monuments
of the Napoleonic invasions, he set out to trace a detailed map of the geographical and human territory based on the places that
were the theaters of battle. What predominates above all are ordinary landscapes, devoid of monuments, sculptures, memorials, tombstones, or official inscriptions. In most cases, there is not the slightest trace of the tragic events that took place there. These are forgotten places where nothing can be “seen,” especially not the memory of the past.
The book opens with a mysterious cover, a map of the locations visited as well as the deadly impacts, inviting the reader to discover a secret Portugal that follows the chronology of another time.
Homen morto passou aqui, 24.5 x 32.5 cm, 112 pages, 54 four-color reproductions, hardcover, Swiss binding, French/Portuguese/English
Published in collaboration with Número Arte e Cultura, Lisbon, with texts by Sandra Vieira Jurgens and Luis Albuquerque.
Graphic design: Laurence Chéné
