the portuguese prison photo project – an exhibition about photographical insights into Portuguese prisons
NEW: from 11 May until 29 September 2019 at the Museu do Aljube – Resistência e Liberdade, Lisbon.
Luis Barbosa
Photographer and trainer at the Instituto Português de Fotografia IPF Porto | born in 1975 in Porto, Portugal
www.luisbarbosaphotography.com
Specializes in social and cultural photo documentation. His interest in photography led him very early into the darkroom where he experimented with a black and white technique which he still favours. He has shown his photographs in various exhibitions and in his blog. He trained at the IPF Porto, where he today teaches photographers. Asked to participate in this project, he was very enthusiastic.
In his black and white pictures of the prisons visited, he presents the point of view of detainees first and their feelings.
„As I never entered a prison before, I was pleased to be soon allowed to discover a new, hidden world, but also aware that participating would bring some emotional charge.“
Peter M. Schulthess
Photographer SBF, specialized in architectural photography, particularly of prisons | born in 1966 in Basel, Switzerland
www.prison.photography
His first photographic experience with a prison was in the old penitentiary of Basel, 15 years ago. It led to his lasting interest in prison and correctional photography. Documenting detention places and prison life became a long-term project as a photographer and author. Next to the prisons of Switzerland, he visited facilities in Germany and now in Portugal.
During his visits of Portuguese prisons, he was accompanied by Gilda Santos of the University of Porto.
He is a member of the Swiss Professional Photographers and Photo Designers SBF.
“This project is a step into an unknown world, in a country I had never visited before. What would I see and what would I be allowed to photograph? Which pictures would I be allowed to show?”
The exhibition
11 May – 29 September 2019
From the 19th century until 1928 a prison for women I From 1928 until 1965 a prison of the PIDE, the political police of the Estado Novo regime I Since 2015 Museum of resistance and liberty.
The museum is dedicated to the resistance to the dictatorship and the struggle for freedom and democracy. Its permanent exhibition documents practices of torture and inhuman living conditions in detention. It honors the freedom fighters and remembers the victims of persecution and detention, torture, exile, deportation and, often, death.
Photography: The prison Aljube in Lisbon, around 1900
