structures & coverings

In this serie, I used long exposures, a photographic technique that makes possible to register imperceptible actions to the human eye, creating unexpected effects and situations.

In contrast with the snapshot that freezes the moment, this technique allows to accumulate time on the photograph, inverting reality and creating effects that go from calm to mystery.
It's lost, also, in a way the domain of elements that will integrate the photograph. Water and its waving will become levelled and static, while clouds will describe their movements. On the other hand, it's also possible to filter the disorder and involving noise, the distraction, creating and giving proeminence to new forms that, in their turn also transmit sensations of serenity, tranquility or simplicity, keeping at the same time tensions between elements in the photograph.

The long exposures make also possible a bigger contemplation of landscape, because, while the register is done, it's possible to pay attention to the surrounding spaces and not only to the selectivity induced by the viewfinder. It's acquired, in this way, greater complicity and empathy with nature, facilitating in a more efficient form, the interpretation and transmission of sensations that landscapes create and provoke.

These photographs, are the result of an intense period of observation and search, in the Ocreza river and Saint Águeda (or Marateca) dam in Castello Branco, of places that show my ideias and personal experience, as well as the way it has evolved, integrating several times other ways of looking, in which I gaze myself and that are also present when a photograph is done.

Text: Carlos Matos
Translation: Sofia Quintas