Photo exhibition “Cerro dos Noivos”

de Paulo Martins

Casa dos Condes – Carlos Brito Municipal Library, Rua 1º de maio, Alcoutim

The project “Cerro dos Noivos” is made up of 13 photographs, collected by the author in November 2021 when he accompanied his parents “to the land”, place of Balurcos (Cercado), to help them pick olives, on a small plot of land located on a hill with the same name.

Due to his paternal family connection, trips to Alcoutim, more precisely to the place of Balurcos (Cercado), where his father is from, are frequent and with photography as his passion, the author recorded the moment with the intention of creating memories that he did not have.

From the experience, the author explains that “at the same time as I helped with the olive picking, I was recording the manual work involved in the entire process and my mother’s delivery at that moment, as if it were a ceremony. Strangely enough, or not, coincidence, the land is known as “Cerro dos Noivos”, at times I found myself looking at my mother arranging the white blankets under the olive trees, as if it were a wedding veil. The photographs are the testimonies that record my mother and her inner strength, which, despite her 76 years of age, contrasted with the fragility of my father (the “groom”), shown in the last photograph of the project”.