A cooking contest boasting varied types of food is surely a fantastic thing though also common. But when the contest is a military event in the heart of Russia, then it becomes something unique. More so extraordinary when one learns that all the vegetables, fruits, meats, marmalades, and canned food are solely produced by the Russian Army. It comes to mind all the history and social power of the Red Army. Even though not practiced for the entire population of the world’s largest country, as used to be in the Soviets’ years, the entire Russian army (still one of the largest internationally) is fully fed with its own produced food. This event took place at a private military base where the “Mercury” Special Forces’ Platoon is stationed, in the town of Zhornovka, region of Smolensk, Russia. NA

This is the portrait of a politician in campaign. Someone with a reserved demeanour and who has always been weary of the methods, scale, and contents normalised in today’s political campaigns. The People – always paying the price – need to feel loved, and so the politician is compelled to bridge the distance. The streets’ stage-curtains are now bare open in the ‘arruadas’ (candidates touring the streets accompanied by music) in what has become a sort of ‘indicator’. Uneasy in her role, Manuela Ferreira Leite had to ‘act’ and make herself noted. Here, the mathematical buffer is left behind - aware of this, she sacrifices herself in the name of the party. And yet, popular attention-making feels all too violent. She cannot hide it. This is, in short, the portrait of someone obliged to duty. More than anything, it tries to show the political solitude and emptiness felt by someone who finds herself unfit for the role.  NA

12 year old Leandro Pires disappeared in the waters of the Tua River in the city of Mirandela on the 2nd of March. Leandro lived in the village of Cedaínhos in the Mirandela Municipality and was a 5th grade pupil at Luciano Cordeiro’s Primary School 2, 3 located in that city. Allegedly after being bullied, he was seen running from the school premises and heading to the city’s park where he threw himself into the river. Running to get a hold of him were his twin brother and three cousins, the only witnesses of his dive, half-naked, into the waters. Helplessly, they watched him being dragged under the strong current. Twenty-three days later, Leandro’s body was found in the riverbank by a fisherman, 12 kilometres downstream from where he dived in. The public office’s investigation was archived without any conclusive confirmation of suicide. Nobody was held responsible. NA

On the 8th of April in 2010, the European Commission called out member states to use EU funds for the social and economic integration of gypsy communities. Contrasting with the forced expulsions that took place in France in that same year, the Portuguese state and local authorities worked to follow through the call. One of the most recent examples is the resettlement process of a gypsy community in Vila Nova de Famalicão – for 34 years this community lived in a neighbourhood known as “Bairro da Estação”, a shack settlement inside the city. In these portraits we see the faces of family members inside their former houses in that same neighbourhood which was, at least for the youngest, the only home they ever knew. The pictures were taken in the two years prior to relocation. NA

On the first of December 2011 the fishing boat Virgem do Sameiro, with six men aboard, was reported missing off the coast of Figueira da Foz. The shipwrecked were all from Caxinas, Vila do Conde, except a Ukrainian immigrant. On the second of December, a helicopter from the Air Force, which was not included in the search and rescue operations, found them in a raft. It was pure luck but for many it was a miracle; for these men, the skipper José Manuel Coentrão, João Coentrão, Prudenciano Pereira, António Fernando Maravalhas, Manuel Oliveira and Tereskhov Vladyslav endured three nights in the cold, with no food, in the middle of a storm, praying. NA

A photograph is always a mental image. Or, in other words, our memory is just made of pictures.

Philippe Dubois in “The Photographic Act and other essays”.

“A morte é uma flor que só abre uma vez” [“Death is a flower that blossoms only once”] is the first verse of a Paul Celan’s poem and something that I had present many times throughout this work. It is as if every time someone once photographed by AGP dies, it also buries a part of the collective heritage of Mora and with it AGP’s work path. Memory is a vulnerable thing and to preserve it calls out for a constant sprint against time. To study and to properly archive the work of a photographer as AGP was is then a matter of urgency and the support of everyone is key to achieve it.

Not having met AGP personally while he lived is obviously a permanent gap in any research attempt about his work. Faced with the urgency of finding the largest number of people that were photographed by AGP and that were still alive today, I decided to focus my effort around the book published in 2003 – conceptually, it was impossible to ignore this long term work, the invaluable and selective look contained in it.

This book became the centre of my world. I searched and photographed its characters. I passed it through different hands, eyes, and ears, always in the hopes of an identification and address. Invariably, I carried the book at all times continuously thinking about the new revelations and relations; it became a steady family album, revisited again and again while it got wider and deeper with each new story, encounters and missed encounters. After a short while I was no longer the photographer asking for information but also the informant, the one recounting news about those whose track had been lost along the years.

Apart from the portraits now developed, I was also interested in finding the contact prints which AGP normally handed in to his clients. Doing this allowed me to dive deeper inside the lives of the original family albums, in that ‘paper house’ where people store their history. At the same time, I understood the impact left by the absence of a community photographer. Family albums have become emptier. All this while photographs are now more common than ever, and despite today’s easy access to different devices. The pictures made these days are sent in digital formats instead of printed - in a way, hanging in that instability of things that never fully materialise.

This book does not close my work as I need to linger a while in Mora. To linger because it is time doing the choosing of what remains in time. And because we need to choose with the time, as if explaining what matters most to us and what identifies us with dignity and pride.

 Nelson D’Aires
April 2013