Twenty-one photographers who have recorded pilgrimages to Fatima show a different look in the exhibition “Iter fidei (faith paths)”, which the Consolata Museum in Fatima, in the district of Santarem, receives from the 15th, announced one of the curators.
The collective is curated by the photo reporters Luís Filipe Coito and Rui Miguel Pedrosa, and is composed of a selection of 36 large format images and 30 smaller photographs, grouped into three series.
According to the synopsis, “Iter fidei (Paths of Faith)” not only celebrates the aesthetic beauty and power of images, through records of “moments of fervent devotion, expressions of unshakeable hope, and rituals that transcend time”, but also aims to encourage “deep reflection on the role of religion in lives and societies.
In focus will be images from 1974 to the present day, explained Rui Miguel Pedrosa, detailing that the invited photojournalists were asked to have a different look, which sometimes reveals itself in details among the crowd.
“We see those moments of worship, of introspection, among all those thousands of people who pass by”, explained the reporter and curator of the exhibition, who has covered the events in Fátima since 2009 for newspapers such as Correio da Manhã, Global Imagens/JN, Observador, and also Lusa news agency.
One of the difficulties was to define who to invite: “The dilemma was which photographers to choose”, he recalled, such was the quantity and quality of what was photographed in the last decades.
“It’s not only the Shrine of Fatima, it has a little bit of everything, from when the image of Our Lady walked through the parishes in Portugal, to some photographs that were also taken of pilgrimage moments”, anticipated Rui Miguel Pedrosa.
The list of participants includes Alfredo Cunha, Ana Brígida, António Pedro Ferreira, Daniel Rocha, Diana Tinoco, Enric Vives-Rubio, Filipe Amorim, João Porfírio, Joaquim Dâmaso, José Carlos Carvalho, José Sena Goulão, Leonel de Castro, Nuno André Ferreira, Nuno Ferreira Santos, Paulo Novais, Paulo Pimenta, Rodrigo Cabrita, Rui Caria, Rui Duarte Silva, and the curators Luís Filipe Coito and Rui Miguel Pedrosa.
At the Consolata Museum, one of the series to be exhibited reflects a work of several years by Paulo Pimenta, from the newspaper Público, about pilgrimages. Another micro-project of “Iter fidei” is by Rui Miguel Pedrosa himself, who is showing for the first time a collection of photographs of religious tattoos.
“I like to go to Fátima, because I really enjoy photographing those moments and the challenge of also looking for different things”, said the photographer who, even on a personal basis, frequently follows what happens in the pilgrimages.
“I usually say, as a joke, that I like to go to Fatima to photograph because if some day there is an apparition there, I want to be there to photograph it.
“Iter fidei (paths of faith)” can be visited at the Consolata Museum in Fatima from July 15 to October 21.
