Photography

 

 

Tomorrow or past

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In 2011, four and a half million people in Portugal lived in cities with 10,000 or more inhabitants.

 

In 2040 the interior of Portugal will have lost another 157 thousand people; and in 90 years that loss will represent 75% of the current population.

 

It is difficult to reverse this trend. Young people want to leave the countryside to continue their studies, get a job and, perhaps, also to forget an ancestral past of underdevelopment.

 

The State looks at this reality in an ambiguous, distant and contradictory way: closing schools, courts, public services, health services, etc. At the same time, benefits are given, mainly tax, to settle young people there.

 

Oblivious to these measures, the villages are disappearing. The imagery of the rural world is replaced by closed doors, abandoned fields and sterile modern structures.

 

No meu país não acontece nada
O corpo curva ao peso de uma alma que não sente

Todos temos janela para o mar voltada
O fisco vela e a palavra era para toda a gente

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excerpt from the poem “Morte ao Meio-Dia”, by Ruy Belo in País Possível (1973)

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