On the 19th of August 1839, details of the photographic process for creating daguerreotypes were announced to the world. From then on, Photography becomes an indispensable tool to the inventory and the dissemination of all forms of art, a new way to spread ideas through images (as engravings did before) and a wonderful mean to compare and investigate. Eventually it became an art as well, providing a new insight into reality and enlarging our knowledge about it. It gave us a different vision and a memory in images, causing a revolution that gave birth to impressionism.
Photographic inventory of cultural heritage is nowadays an indispensable task for each culture, essential for the safeguard, research and divulgation of our most precious legacy. Nothing can replace the physical presence of this heritage and what it can reveal, teach and move generations to come. However, most of our training and artistic visual culture is made through the access to photographs of works of art from museums all over the world. Therefore, the photographer of works of art has this huge responsibility of acting as an interpreter of human creativity from all cultures and all times. The importance of specific training for these professionals has been much underestimated.
The Institute of Museums and Conservation has been developing a very important effort to accomplish the photographic inventory of the National Museums collections, and has collaborated with other institutions when requested. Its Photographic Documentation Unit has now a huge asset of hundreds of thousands of images available to everyone, which have contributed to publicize the importance of Portuguese Cultural Heritage throughout the world.
For the last 36 years, I have decided to live a fantastic adventure: in the landscape, in isolated places or big cities, in courts, cemeteries, roofs, archaeological sites, private houses, workshops, docks, transport stations, warehouses, storages, archives, palaces, museums and many other places which I can’t recall and can’t be imagined… my task has been to photograph the best models ever made by men. In all the things that this profession has taught me in the last 33 years, two things are outstanding: rigorous method and humility in the presence of creativity, from the Boch’s Temptations of St. Anthony (one of the most famous paintings in the National Museum of Ancient Art, Lisbon) to the most humble artefact, all of them regarded with the same respect and attention.
When I was asked to prepare an exhibition about photography of works of art, unable to give an overview, I had to focus on one subject. Stone was my choice, maybe because stones are so unknown to all of us, including art historians. And how magic they are! Usually immersed in the darkness, even in daylight, they reveal themselves if we focus light on them. That is the moment when we stare at them in ecstasy, seeing the traces left by the instruments, almost in presence of act of creation, perceiving the author through his message.