THE MEMORY OF THE WORLD [back]

TA PROHM - THE MEMORY OF THE WORLD (2002)

The Memory of the World, Maria do Carmo Serén, Porto 2013

The viral exuberance of Indian tropical forests – that same invasive explosion that we encounter in these images by Júlio de Matos appears before us as underlying the disturbed decorative features of the Indian temples found within. Because, after all, this same perturbation of the senses is also to be found in manueline carved stone or the Portuguese baroque that so effectively conveys the multiculturalism that surged out of the 16th century voyages of exploration. As we so well know, this is one of the pathways that infects the nature of our shapes and perspectives.

In a period of a reductive conceptualism of form, these excessive images of energy and feeling and apparently indicative of the fragility of human action against nature, insinuate the archetypes of our fears and the figure of hostile nature. Today, in times of technological civilisation and the culture of information, the embrace of vegetation evokes protection from the prostheses that negotiate the course of human life and, as the symbiosis of the stone and the tree branches, man also becomes a mixture of the three ancient kingdoms of the world, that thereby self-sustain themselves. However, the fear of being absorbed by alien elements remains as a distinction of its increasingly abstract nature.

Man, ever more dependent on the screen and the cryptic equipment that replace the natural, falls susceptible to the strangeness of the fear that this life might conquer the territory and advance on the artificial constructions with which humanity has replaced nature and see his very own body transformed. Even though, as here becomes so very clear, nature represents the support for the remains left by the passage of man.

The theme is naturally that of possession. The invasive strength extending beyond man and of which we have ever less experience. There is no concept when its limits are not secure. And it is the nature of these images that, even if decodified, continue onwards enigmatically to draw us in and possess us. Possession and enigma are, once again, the recurring characteristics of contemporary photography. In looking at these images by Júlio de Matos, understanding and agreement does not strip them of the thrill of strangeness.