All islands are mountains

• Autor(a) principal: Serrão, Nuno
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.13/5303
• topic: Fotografia; Photography; .; Faculdade de Artes e Humanidades

We live in the age of multi-tabs, binge-watching, and immediatism. We have instant coffee, instant messaging, expressways, and speedy boarding. Travelling and arriving faster than ever, we no longer have the time to understand what we are slowly losing along the way. If all journeys are made of comfortable shortcuts, what happens to the questions that arise from discomfort and uncertainty? I faced this while observing the contrasts of the gradually evolving Madeira landscape, where natural and constructed spaces are progressively being transformed by a new Europe attempting to keep up with modern life. This five million-year-old volcanic mountain that grew from a depth of around 4000 meters is now in its penumbra period, as it is neither slow and traditional nor modern and fast enough to face this century’s challenges. That dichotomy is most evident in the rural areas where, for instance, at the base of the new brutalist express-ways whose speed prevented population exodus, we find old roads that wind around the same landscape slowly and sinuously, keeping tradition in. Knowing that I could be facing a perspective bias resulting from the correlation between depth perception and the speed we travel through time, I decided to slow down and equipped with a medium-format analogue camera, wander and wonder about the power of stillness and what happens when we lose those questions that can answer what remains unanswered. The result is a visual exploration of the contrasts and complexities of these topics, inviting the audience to slow down and reflect on the human condition and the impact of speed and progress on our environment and humanity.