The photo library of the Centre for Geographical Studies of the Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning of the University of Lisbon (CEG-IGOT-ULisboa) and the Macau Scientific and Cultural Center (CCCM) are co-organizing the online photography exhibition Macau: different looks in different times with photographs by Portuguese geographer Raquel Soeiro de Brito, taken in the 1960s, and others from the CCCM collection by Álvaro Tavares, Eduardo Tomé, Cheong Io Tong and Rogério Beltrão Coelho, captured in the 1980s and 1990s.
The idea for the exhibition came very naturally says Professor Francisco Roque de Oliveira, one of the curators of the exhibition.
“We knew that in 2021 it would be exactly 60 years since Professor Raquel Soeiro de Brito had studied Macau for the first time, and that here, in the photo library of the Center for Geographical Studies (CEG) of the University of Lisbon, we kept most of the photographic material collected on that occasion – both black and white photographs and slides,” explains the professor who is a permanent researcher at CEG-IGOT-Ulisboa, with a doctorate in Human Geography from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Professor Roque de Oliveira co-curated the exhibition with Helena Coelho, librarian of the CCCM.
“It was important for us to compare the photographic images from that time, with scenes from the following decades that had not been thought of through the eyes of a scientist in field work, so that we could perceive similarities and differences in the perspectives of observations of the same territory that underwent a very rapid transformation in a short period of time. Therefore, we launched the challenge to CCCM, which was promptly accepted by those responsible for it”, explains the academic.
It was decided that, in order to counterpoint Raquel Soeiro de Brito’s work, photographs from the 1980’s and 1990’s by four journalists and photojournalists from Macau, incorporated in the CCCM Library around 20 years ago, would be chosen. In the end, 66 images were selected that represent “the new face that Macau had been acquiring.” From the geographer’s side, 90 images were selected from the more than 300 slides and photos of her 1961 trip.
“They are images of a city with just over 150,000 inhabitants, still very much marked by maritime activities, by Chinese horticulture in the areas recently reclaimed from the sea, and by the survival of interstitial spaces not completely urbanized,” explains CEG-IGOT-Ulisboa in the text introducing the exhibition.
The decision to create the exhibition online stems from the current conditions of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, Professor Roque de Oliveira, does not rule out the possibility of a traditional physical exhibition in the future.
“The pandemic context made us all reinvent ways to communicate in a very short time period. When we scheduled the activities for 2021, we were in full lockdown. The CCCM Library was also closed to in-person activities. So we tried to anticipate that the exhibition could be enjoyed regardless of the conditions that we would have at the time of the inauguration.”
The co-curator considers that the images that are now available to the public in digital format are of great documentary value, highlighting “the immense aesthetic quality” of the photographs by Raquel Soeiro de Brito. He also reveals that a book including some of the photographs of Macau chosen for this exhibition will be launched shortly, to be included in the Cadernos da Fototeca collection that will begin to be published by the CEG’s Phototeca.
“This book is entitled Photographic Memories: an interview with Raquel Soeiro de Brito and is about her career as a geographer, organized around her photographs in the CEG’s Phototheque, crossing several areas, including Macau. Another volume of the same collection is also planned, in this case exclusively dedicated to Macau.”
Commenting on the matching up of various photos in the exhibition, the curator says: “Most of the images from the 1980s and 1990s offer a very expressive counterpoint to these spaces and to some of the ways of life still present in Macau in the early 1960s.”
“The landscapes of Macau have undergone a radical transformation in a very brief period of time. Raquel Soeiro de Brito’s photographs from 1961 capture the last moment of a very long time – beginning with the images of the vegetable gardens of Macau, Taipa, and Coloane, which disappeared soon after, or the fabulous images of sailing boats of all kinds that would also disappear in a few years.”
Professor Roque de Oliveira has no doubts that this is a collection of “exceptional value”. Specifically in the case of Raquel Soeiro de Brito’s photo series, “it is the most extensive series of photographs on Macau that exists in the CEG’s Phototheque collection – more than 300 images, including photographs and slides.”
“It is a set of photographs with great didactic value for us to understand how geographers of this period worked in the field. There is a know-how in the criteria used to define the sites to photograph, the framing used, and the themes selected, paying attention to the spatial organization of the city and the main urban functions – residential, commercial, services, etc.”
The exhibition is divided into four sections: Views, Streets and People, The Gardens and Maritime Life. “Views” of Macau presents images of Macau taken from the highest points offering panoramas of the Inner Harbour and Praia Grande. “Streets and People” presents Macau’s urban life centered in the Bairro do Bazar and extending to the Inner Harbour, along Rua do Almirante Sérgio, and Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro.
“The Gardens” section reveals how, in the early 1960s, small vegetable gardens existed on reclaimed land on the eastern outskirts of Macau “ensuring the livelihoods of more than a thousand Macau Chinese and also of many refugee families from Mainland China.”
Finally, “Maritime Life,” depicts the many different types of Chinese boats that still plied the waters of Macau in the early 1960s.
The exhibition also includes a video testimonial by Raquel Soeiro de Brito, a multimedia montage of images from Josef von Sternberg’s (and Nicholas Ray’s) 1952 film Macao, and a section with relevant old cartography of Macau.
97-year-old Raquel Soeiro de Brito was born in Elvas in 1925. She graduated in Geography in 1948 at the Faculty of Arts, University of Lisbon. As well as studying Macau, she also stood out for her work in Portuguese India and Timor, where she studied the relief of the island, and human factors such as land occupation and population dispersion.
View the online exhibition at
https://exposicoes.ceg.ulisboa.pt
