Menos que nada não é igual a tudo

It's been seven years since the first photo I took during warm-up exercises, moments before the start of "Klaxon", a new circus performance by the French company Akoreacro. The calm, serenity and balance that emanate from this image are the antithesis of the frantic and intense performance that followed. The sight of the emptiness of the grandstand, which moments later would be filled to the point where not a hair would fit between the bodies of the audience, is also antagonistic to most of the performances I've seen and photographed. The heat inside the chapiteau, installed in the Algarve's highest municipality, contrasted with the wintry Monchique night... antitheses, antagonisms and contrasts are critical words in this series of images. But there are others (words and photographs)... Let's go back to the first image.

The acrobat's confident, serene and complicit gaze, looking me in the eye without shame or fear, is the best proof that I'm there without being there. And it is this way of being that I want to show through these photographs. To make an exception and show what is not visible to the vast majority of the public. The other side. The moments before and after. Intimacy, a tear of pain or happiness, a light that pierces and strikes without hurting or staining but leaves a mark. Something you don't usually see. The tolerant glances that are exchanged, the gestures that are thought to be more than they are, the movements that lift structures and stretch forms. Everything is always in rhythmic harmony with the environment. To be part of a whole without losing one's uniqueness. To observe calmly, frequently, and attentively, without making the gaze intrusive. Being distant and close at the same time. Actions and reactions transformed into spaces for shared activities. Contained sparse landscapes that are at the same time immense and intense. Small, grandiose spaces. Spaces for creating, imagining, glimpsing and trying to know, constantly and even more, the less.

The title of this work is taken from a passage in "A Saga/Fuga de J.B.", an outstanding work by Gonzalo Torrente Ballester (José Saramago said of it that the feeling he had when reading it was only comparable to what he had felt when reading Cervantes' Don Quixote de la Mancha). This title not only sums up what I want to show (or not show) with my pictures, but also has a strong subliminal message that everyone can decipher in their own way.