Pt / En

The right distance
Ana Catarina Costa
November 2023

In the preface to his book Why people photograph, Robert Adams mentions a recurring idea in his writings: "the effort we all make, photographers and nonphotographers, to affirm life without lying about it". This task is not as easy as it might seem. John Berger also reflects on the false opposition between the real and the imaginary, and how reality, far from being something stable and taken for granted, must be continually sought out, maintained and rescued. Finding coherence between everything that surrounds us - the set of events that we commonly call reality - is always, in essence, the construction of an imaginary.

Reality goes beyond the mere accumulation of facts or the stabilization of culturally produced ideas. Capturing reality or affirming life through photography is therefore an exercise that lies in an uncertain territory between non-fiction and fiction, where any misstep can upset a desired balance. The challenge of visiting the neighborhoods built under SAAL* today entails this same difficulty: trying to escape an outdated gaze and the symbolic load associated with the political context that gave rise to this housing program, and being open to looking at life in the neighborhoods in the present, free of preconceptions.

The 75 SAAL neighbourhoods built throughout the country were the result of the commitment and persistence of the communities who live there, the technical teams who collaborated on their design and the various people and movements who organized themselves and fought to defend the right to a decent home, neighbourhood and city for all. But they also bear witness to the different fates that each one of them has had, almost 50 years on since April 25. The heterogeneity in terms of integrity, community life, conservation and ownership of the various neighborhoods reveals the weight and pressure - and resistance - to which they, like other urban spaces, are subject. Recognizing these different layers has been the motivation behind the project An Archaeology of Utopia.

While we talk to the residents of the neighborhoods, Francisco wanders freely, perhaps more guided by his emotions than by an attempt to pin down facts. The moment when the photographs that result from these visits are developed is always a surprise, as they frame small events that had gone completely unnoticed, such as the hand that was tightly guarding gardening scraps while two neighbors were telling us about their friendship. The fragmentation of some events, such as that hand isolated from the face - reminiscent of the hands in Gregory Halpern's images - allows us to establish a link to affections and contribute to the multiplication of hypotheses in the construction of that imaginary, where ideas of time, waiting, restriction and freedom fit in.

Approaching the life of each of these neighborhoods through photography is not the result of observation, but of an encounter, of a negotiated proximity between the photographer and the depicted objects, similar to what Berger suggests about the act of painting. There is a sharing, a collaboration, a tense and restless relationship in the discovery, at each moment, of the right distance that allows us to go beyond the surface, making the photograph come alive. The construction of this dialog generates another moment, which simultaneously integrates and detaches itself from that place. Why people photograph? As José Mário Branco sang: "Why, I don't know, but I do know that this thing is beautiful".

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* SAAL (Mobile Service for Local Support) was a housing program implemented during the Portuguese revolutionary period (between August 1974 and October 1976) that sought to improve the housing conditions of the poorest classes based on a collective effort and the aspiration for a more equitable life for all.

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Photographic essay integrated in the project "an archaeology of utopia", developed by Ana Catarina Costa, Francisco Ascensão, João Paupério, Maria Rebelo and Ricardo Santos.