Eurico Lino do Vale

“When photographing a person, I worry about exploring the documentary side, thinking of portraiture as a faithful recording technique. On the other hand, I am fascinated by the possibility of entering a place where everything already exists, and concentrating only on isolated aspects, abstracting myself from everything around me and, wrapped in silence, imagining a single scene. That's the world of the fantastic where details are dominant, and time doesn't exist.”


When I see photographs, particularly portraits, what fascinates me most is the encounter between the portraitist and the one portrayed. I try to assess what kind of encounter it was and how it all might have happened from the beginning. The reason for the encounter is perhaps what interests me most. I think it's possible to see in the portrait all the past that preceded that moment, and that's what determines the final result. That's where the art is. The art of the encounter. The atmosphere in which the meeting is arranged will be recorded in the photograph. The authenticity of that encounter is also noticeable. Whenever someone tries to stage another kind of encounter, that staging will appear in the Portrait. It's impossible to conceal it. There are no perfect crimes, and that's just as amusing.

 

 
Eurico Lino do Vale (b. 1966) was born in Porto. He lives and works in Lisbon. In 1993 he completed the full program of the photography course at AR.CO, Lisbon. The following year he received a scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation to do an internship at the Royal College of Art (London), and again in 1995 to attend the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (Germany), where he completed his master's degree in 1997. The portrait is the central subject of his work, which he uses to address issues of identity, representation and memory. He has been exhibiting individually since 1999 and is represented in collections such as the Modern Art Center Collection - Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the PLMJ Foundation Collection, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie Collection, among others. In 2008 he was awarded the BESphoto prize. He has been represented by Galeria Belard since 2022.