I saw a sign. I understood it was an invitation to find out more.
The Poetry of
the Cityscape
Exhibition
Walking with Fernando Pessoa.
Psychogeographical experience
in Tomar, Portugal.
The Poetry of the Cityscape is artistic research based on the discovery of the city by capturing some urban details in a poetic way. Combining photography with poetry, the project aimed to experience urban discoveries through emotions, and then translate all emotions into visual narratives. This research was carried out in Portugal with the help of the Erasmus+ programme I followed in 2019. I owe a great debt to Professor Antonio Ventura (Director of the Master in Photography at Instituto Politécnico de Tomar, CEFT/Casa dos Cubos) for coordination and continuous support during this research.
The exhibition, The Poetry of the Cityscape, was part of the National Plan for the Arts developed by the governmental fields of Culture and Education in Portugal and was organised by the Center for Photography Studies (CEFT - Casa dos Cubos) and Templar School Group, at the Maria de Lourdes Gallery in Mello e Castro da Escola Jácome Ratton in Tomar.
The Poetry of the Cityscape was exhibited for almost 10 months. After closing, I transferred this exhibition to a virtual space. See the virtual exhibition.
Poster of the exhibition
Image from the exhibition opening
Image from the exhibition opening
The exhibition presents a series of seven visual narratives containing close-up frames or small details of the city of Tomar correlated with the poems of Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935), one of the greatest modern poets of Portugal. To understand the city of Tomar's soul, an in-depth exploration of the environment was necessary for several weeks. Documenting the Portuguese spirit, I understood its association with nostalgia, that sensitivity that I observed in every detail of the urban landscape.
How could nostalgia be represented better than through a poetic vision? To discover the city of Tomar, I needed a guide, and that guide was Fernando Pessoa. His poetic work is marked by the concept of Saudade, which for Pessoa was linked to loneliness, leading to painful feelings associated with nostalgia. This loneliness was his source of inspiration, becoming a creative and imaginative presence.
Reading Pessoa's imaginative poems, I noticed that the poet masterfully captured the Portuguese spirit in his verses. Therefore, Pessoa's poems represented the starting point in discovering and understanding the Portuguese spirit and were an inexhaustible source of inspiration for the realisation of my visual narratives.
Through this collection of images, I also expressed the emotions of my discoveries in the city of Tomar. Thus, I doubled the intensity of the emotional state contained in the poems. I decided to display the images on seven panels for the exhibition, like in the Genesis of the World, so each panel is dedicated to one day of the week.
Each of the seven visual narratives represents a journey through the city, like an esoteric road reconstructed from the visual fragments that impressed me. With each poem, the city revealed to me another facet, another phenomenological experience, another set of emotions.
MONDAY
I'm the ghost of a king
That without ceasing travels
The rooms of an abandoned palace...
My story I don't know...
Far away from me, I smoke from thinking it, it dies
The idea that I had some past...
I don't know what I am.
I don't know if I'm the dream
That someone from the other world is having...
I think maybe I am
Being a casual profile of a sad king
In a story that a god is rereading...
(See arquivopessoa.net for original verses)
TUESDAY
Shadow rags float
Around what I don't know how to be
It is a whole sky that is shaded
Without letting me see.
The mystery of heights
Undo in formless rhythms
In the unruly black
With which the air becomes dark.
But in all this, what does
The universe a being undone,
I kept it, like my peace,
The hope that pain brings me,
Tight against the chest.
(See arquivopessoa.net for original verses)
WEDNESDAY
If someone knocks on your door one day,
If someone knocks on your door one day,
Saying you are an emissary of mine,
Do not believe, even if it is me;
That my vain pride does not behave
Knock even on the unreal door of heaven.
But if, of course, and without listening
Someone knock, go to the door open
And find someone like waiting
To dare to hit; meditate a little. That was
My emissary and me and what it contains
My pride of what despairs.
Open to anyone who doesn't knock on your door!
(See arquivopessoa.net for original verses)
Thursday
Ah, how often, at the right time
What I forget, I see a bird flight pass
And I am saddened!
Because it's light, light, right
In the air of awe?
Because it goes under the open sky
Without a detour?
Because having wings symbolizes
The freedom
That life denies and the soul needs?
I know you invade me
A horror of having me covering, Like a flood
My heart, and spills over, My soul alien
A desire, not to be a bird, But of power
Having I don't know what about the smooth flight
Within my being.
(See arquivopessoa.net for original verses)
FRIDAY
I stopped being the one I expected
That is, I stopped being who I never was...
Between wave and wave, the wave doesn't dig,
And everything in being together lasts and flows.
The arrow trembles as, in the wide quiver,
The present to the future creates and includes.
If the seas raise their angry fury
Is that the future peace obstructs its trail.
It all depends on what doesn't exist.
That's why my mute being converts
In its own resemblance, stark and sad.
Nothing explains me. Nothing belongs to me.
And above all, the alien moon pours out
The light dissipates everything and nothing wins.
(See arquivopessoa.net for original verses)
SATURDAY
Behind that window
Whose curtain does not change,
I put the vision of that
that the soul itself studies
In the desire that reveals it. I don't lack love.
Whoever wants me doesn't miss me.
But it would have another flavour if this were interior
To that tall window. Why? If I knew, I had
Everything I want I have. I loved the Queen once,
And there is always in my soul, An unfilled throne.
Whenever I can dream, Whenever I don't see it,
I put it on, The throne in that place;
Beyond the curtain is home,
Beyond the window the dream.
So, passing, I weave, the artifice of the way
And a little bit of me forget
For nothing more to life I ask
Than be your neighbor.
(See arquivopessoa.net for original verses)
SUNDAY
I dreamed, confused, and the sleep was dispersed,
But, when I woke up from the confusion,
I saw that this life here and this universe
They are not clearer than dreams are.
Dim light hangs where I'm talking
To this reality of illusion.
If I close my eyes, I'm immersed again
In those shadows in the darkness.
Dark, dark, everything, in dream or life,
It is the same mixture of beings
Either at night, or transferred to the day.
Nothing is real, nothing in your vain moves
It belongs to a defined form,
Trace seen of only heard.
(See arquivopessoa.net for original verses)
