In this exhibition I presented four images taken from a larger set of images, part of a project (“River“) that I intend to organize in the form of a book and an exhibition. Even so these four images form an interesting dialogue with each other, establishing relationships between the margin, its reflection and the river. They are a fragment, like a section of a river it is, and simultaneously part of a whole.
Interested in this context I work with the opposite margin as an object of contemplation and uncertainty. His reflection in the waters of the river and the mystery of the unknown represented by the bank that we cannot reach without immersing ourselves in the river, the tension of something so close, but at the same time unreachable without complete delivery, form images like windows for ours reflection and contemplation itself.
This project*, originally carried out in 2019 in the context of the artistic residency promoted by the Master of Photography and Document Cinema of ESMAD in Sever de Vouga, allowed me to think and represent the river not only as a physical element of the landscape, but as a living entity and part of our unconscious.
Symbolically, the river represents the flow of time and the natural flow of nature with all its cycles, transitions, transformations and passages. A river begins like a source of water at the top of the mountains, descending and insinuating itself through the valleys, losing in the lakes or in the seas.
This origin is always present throughout its journey through its banks. This duality between the river and the reflection of its origins interested me and tried to capture this duality by reflecting the trees and the mountain, on the revealing surface of the water.
There is a river for each person who plunges into it, and in the symbolic sense of the term, to penetrate a river, it is for the soul something similar to entering a body. Like the river, our body has a precarious existence, runs like water, and each soul has its private body, this ephemeral part of its existence… its river.
The river reminds us that we should advance forward. When we try to go back (living in the past) it is as if we are upstream in a futile attempt to challenge the natural flow of nature.
The river, during its long journey, symbolizes life in general and our life in particular. There are periods when the river passes, just like us, by times of turbulence, chaos and disturbance and suffers twists, curves and pauses, and then there are periods when the river flows peaceful, smooth and calm.
Finally, just like with each and each of us, the time comes for the river to finish its long trip. This is the moment when the river reaches its mouth crosses its biggest change and then being part of the great sea. This moment of transition to the river symbolizes to us our own moment of transformation that occurs when our long trip comes to an end. This is the moment when we also undergo a change to return and reintegrate part of this great consciousness to which we call divinity. The river is one of the most beautiful metaphors for this complex trip we call life!
* Photographed with a medium format digital camera (Fujifilm GFX-50R) courtesy of Fujifilm Portugal.
