Encontros da Imagem 2019

Discovery Awards 2019 is showing a selction from the book Signal & Noise From the 13th to the 15th of September, 2019, Braga, Portugal

What Now?

We are living through times of great violence, violence between people and violence between people and nature. As a society, we have forgotten what history has taught us –  that violence only brings more violence. We are living through times of fractured opinions, where these destroy entire families, communities, and countries. Times of censored discourses and of the politically correct. Times where we are constantly being bombarded with contradictory information which makes us live in fear and in a state of constant vigilance. This fear also makes us feel as if our bodies suddenly lost their power to keep us safe. Most of us feel at home when we are allowed to speak our own language, but thousands have been forced to flee their homes and live in countries where no one speaks their language and where their basic human rights are being neglected. We are scared, so we have become egocentric and resort to violence, we put up walls and we create borders be they physical or mental. The time has come where we have to decide as a society if we will move forward with tolerance, defending human rights and thinking about our planet as our final refuge. Will it be against racism, xenofobia, gender inequality or any other kind of intolerance ? Or will we continue living with these traumas and see where they lead us? Encontros da Imagem – International Photography and Visual Arts Festivals in its 29th edition through contemporary photography, want’s to bring together different ideas and ways of seeing our present world in an effort to open up discussion around these subjects. Subjects which are relevant but so fractured, and thus help rethink and reimagine our future!