O Porto Space inaugurates the unprecedented exhibition “Visible Medium", by PO AlmeidaPredominantly in black and white, his photographs construct an authorial interpretation of the urban landscape, far removed from the typical tourist record.
By fragmenting scenes and reorganizing their elements through composition, PO creates photos that invite the viewer to slow down their gaze and discover new relationships between people, objects, and spaces. The work can be visited until October 3rd. Information on Instagram @portodecultura.
The photographic work of Paulo Octavio Pereira de Almeida, or PO Almeida, as he signs his work, stems from the experience of displacement. Throughout his career as a marketing professional, he traveled to dozens of cities on different continents, transforming the time between work commitments and family trips into opportunities to walk, observe, and photograph. "The Visible Medium" is one of the results achieved by the artist.
“I always try to create images based on what I see in the images of my masters,” explains the artist. His focus is on what he calls urban characters: objects, statues, and posters in arrangements that merge with shadows. “The compositions reflect the gaze of these masters and my walks around the world, always with my camera in hand, trying to make these images have some meaning. Lee Friedlander, André Kertész, and Manuel Alvares Bravo are among his references.”
PO Almeida's interest lies less in the places themselves than in the relationships established within them: overlapping planes, plays of light and shadow, reflections, geometries, gestures, and chance encounters reveal a city that continually reorganizes itself before the gaze. He is the author of the book that shares the same name as the exhibition, "Meio Visível" (Fotô Editorial, 2021, 74 pgs.), which engages with a tradition in modern photography that understands the street as a space for visual invention.
