Sometimes it takes a while to realize that you have made a good choice in your life's direction. Over two years ago, I decided to take my personal photography more seriously. One thing that I always dreamed of doing, but never had the guts to attempt, was an artist residency. So, in early 2015, I mustered the courage to apply for an opportunity to spend a month in the city of Porto, Portugal. My focus on Portugal was partly due to my connection with fellow photographer, Fabio Miguel Roque. He is based in Sintra, just outside of the capital of Lisbon. We are both members of the Latent Image Collective, and though we had never met in person, I was excited to finally connect and spend some time shooting together. Long story short, I was invited for a residency at De Liceiras 18, and spent a month focussing on my personal photographic work. I also spent two days shooting with Fábio, and our creative bonds deepened as a result.
Fast forward to October 2016. Fábio and I were looking for a project to collaborate on long-distance. We devised a plan to shoot simultaneously for 24 hours, each of us taking a solo, photographic road trip, each wandering without a set plan into the desert near our homes. We would share the results of the trip in a joint publication. We released the book "Beyond / Além" last year, and hoped that we could one day exhibit the work. That hope will be realized this weekend in Évora, Portugal.
I am so thrilled to be able to share the walls of a gallery with my friend and collaborator, and it stands as a tangible manifestation of the idea we had months ago. What is even more meaningful to me is that first step I took outside of my comfort zone, the decision to travel to Portugal in the first place, has reaped so many benefits for me personally and creatively.
The show opens this Saturday at the Palácio de D. Manuel in Évora. I received the text from the program, that was written by Eduardo Luciano, Councilor for Culture of the Municipality of Évora. I'd like to share it here, as it is an insightful analysis of the work that Fábio and I created. I am honored and humbled by these words.
“Only art could unite two realities that are two thousand kilometers away, and yet they feel so close. From these images we can perceive that the ocean that separates is, above all, the ocean that also unites us, just as the bridge that we share may be the element we need to overcome and to reach the other. The aridity, the loneliness, the paths that the work of these two photographers explore, seem to go nowhere. Yet, there have the common features: the existence of humans, both in the American desert and in the Alentejo. We look at the two realities from a point so far and yet so close, via the sensitivity of these two artists.
This exhibition is a challenge of reading reality, above prejudices and against prejudices. In a world where the unknown is the engine of our fear and in which there is a growing temptation to mortgage freedom on behalf of a false security, Fábio Miguel Roque and Nick Tauro Jr. show us, in an impressive way, the deep similarities that bind us.
The Municipality of Évora could not fail to accept and promote this universalist approach to space, as it explores the aesthetic convergence of two naturally divergent environments. It is our duty, as a public service, to promote unrest, stave off the doldrums, question certainties, and discuss the unknown. Without fear and knowing that the “invisible city”, that Italo Calvino brilliantly put into the words of Marco Polo, it will be whenever our imagination allows.
Welcome to the journey, welcome to the paths that lead us to the “other” landscape. So that the difficulty of finding it is not as difficult as José Samarago enunciated in his speech before accepting the Nobel Prize, “one arrives more easily at Mars than at our own fellow human.” Perhaps art is the map that enables the trip to the universe of the other, and is more pleasant and shorter than the hypothetical arrival to Mars.”
Click on the images above to see the program from the exhibit.
