Capture

The human desire to know and perceive the world and its visible manifesta ons finds a possibility of realisa on with the appearance of photography. It is in this way that “I am burning with desire to see your experiments from na nature” – a famous sentence from a le er by Daguerre addressed to Niepce at the beginning of the development of this medium – is summoned up as the tle of the exhibi on of the Imagerie Collec ve, not only as a source of inspi inspira on, but also as a method for thinking photography and its processes. The three proposals – by José Domingos, Magda Fernandes and Sofia Berberan – arise from the ar s c residency held at the Botanical Garden of Porto University, and seek to explore the photographic, that is, a set of conce concepts and reflec ons to think and feel the photographic image in a space that also invites to think and problema ze what we understand today for nature. The experience with the place provides encounters with the vital cycles of the plants that live here, which unveil the history of this space in a symbio c dialogue between the plant architecture and the structural organicity of the open and closed g the open and closed greenhouses. An area of botanical preserva on with specific characteris cs for acclima ng some species coexists alongside its own archaeology, inhabited by varie es that to define in some cases as invasive or spontaneous would be reduc ve, eventually leading us to ques on the boundaries of these defini ons. And in this spa al int interval between one structure and another, we can s ll follow other paths, this me only with the movement of our eyes as we observe some of these protec ve glass panes. They are the snail trails, paths that balance the linearity and geometry of the spaces drawn by the human hand and that never advance in straight lines, drawing topographies and landscapes as aerial views. This is the path that Ma Magda Fernandes invites us to cross with her “studies on the surface”, which are also an oscilla on between a slow observa on that is proper of experimental photography and its vola le record, like chlorella p powder that shapes an image if exposed to the light and fades in a breath, or a tree leaf that will change its state in a short period of me. Overlaps of textures are explored in the collages in the photographic prints on hibiscus leaves on sheets of paper embroidered in red with architectural elements that are recognizable walking through this bo botanical garden. If a sheet of