Acceso usuarios
Paul Melo e Castro
This article analyses Eduardo Gageiro's representation of post-war, pre-revolution Lisbon society in the light of French humanist street photography. It is argued that Gageiro's images closely fit what Peter Hamilton called the 'representational paradigm' of this stream of street photography, and that, by comparing the photographs in Cais da Memória to this thematic grid, we can establish the parameters of its depiction of the city under Salazar. One of the criticisms levelled at French humanist street photography is that it creates a rosy, nostalgia-tinted vision of the recent, yet vastly different, past. While there is an element of Gageiro's work that could be dismissed as twee, any sentimentalilty is counterbalanced by a frontal depiction of the problems of the latter Estado Novo period. In addition, by bearing witness to the positive qualities of this past, Cais da Memória also permits an interrogation of the nature of the present and its difference from historical conditions.
