Master Thesis in Photography
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Texto: Marta Pinto Machado
School of Arts at Catholic University of Porto, 2021
Nos txôn :
photographies, memory and the possibilities of a narrative in the post-colonial discourse
(PT) Nos Txôn: as fotografias, a memória e as possibilidades de uma narrativa no discurso pós-colonial
ABSTRACT
The project aims to study and explore the relationships between subject and place when confronted with a new geography, in this specific case, of my Cape Verdean mother, and her relationship with the geography that she inhabits, the experience of “place” in a disconnected geography, and the search or establishment of identity. “Nos txon”, is a Cape Verdean expression that means our place, the name given to the project, appears as an allusion to the idea of loss of the subject and the loss of geography introducing an idea of belonging and melancholy in relation to the place, while at the same time it evokes a direct relationship between a subject and a geography as a feeling of belonging, i.e., an idea that two elements that combine the individual are separated, generating the idea of loss, of "sodade". Looking through a territory and a reality that is familiar to me by my Cape Verdean mother who traveled to Europe, the intention is to understand the revisited memory of the body as part of the landscape and the camera as a social instrument in reading the subject in her insertion in a place. A reading is sought, as much as an understanding of place as a concrete phenomenon made up of concrete “things” that relate to the individual and that interrelate with each other, sometimes with a sense of belonging. Captive of a desire to approach and get closer, I understand this need to understand the landscape as a cultural construction that defies totalitarian conceptualizations of the relationships between human beings and the physical environment/ geography.
