March, 31st 2010

JÚLIO DE MATOS SPEAKS AT INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR "ON THE SURFACE" AT FACULTY OF ARCHITECTURE OF U.PORTO

On May 5th, 2:30 p.m., Júlio de Matos will integrate the several important speakers of the International Seminar "On the Surface: Public Space and Architectural Images in Debate" at Faculty of Architecture of U.Porto.

"Since 2001, I have been developing "photographic bodies of work" that pretend to be "Essays" involving a fictional look on what still are "Living Documents". Realities of architectural and public spaces clearly not virtual, of a time and/or cultures, that are not ours.

Each of the 4 projects that I intend to present acquired naturally contours and a visual aesthetic of its own. Because the experienced sensations and the felt emotions were very unique in each one. In 2001, I photographed "Ta Prohm, The Memory of the World" in Siem Reap, Cambodia, where a one of a kind ruin of an extinct Hindu civilization, organically merges with nature.

"Heaven´s Door - Manikarnika Ghat" photographed in Varanasi, India, 2003, offers a western way of seeing into an urban space dedicated to a ritual of departure where, quietly and without tears, we experience the merging of life and the universe.

I made the "Fading Hutongs" project between 2005-2008, in Beijing, China. During the massive demolition of Beijing's Hutongs, the traditional streets of Beijing, and Beijing's Siheyuan, the square courtyard houses, that remind us of the urban vision of Kublai Khan, a contemporary of Marco Polo, I was still in time to build a personal and somehow imaginary vision of a loss I also emotionally felt.

In 2008, this time in Portugal, my country, I returned to the places of my childhood, and to the memory in my mind’s eye, and now as an architect, I (re)discovered and (re)visited "Casas de Brasileiro". There is an imaginary and fictional land, with a slight flavour of the tropics, when we feel everything that this series of pictures presents. In all these projects I have questioned plenty times: Is it really the architecture photographable? Or just documentary, or appropriated for photography? What is the role that our personal journey and that our emotions play in our vision, and interpretation of the outside world to our skin?"