ANDRÉ FRANCISCO
Posted:
29 May 2019
Photos & Text:
André Francisco
Intro:
Martin Hufnagel
André started taking pictures ten years ago when he finished High School. But it wasn't until 2 or 3 years ago that his passion fully unfolded, due to picking up an analog camera.
The following series was taken during a trip to Porto Covo in Portugal.
One of my favourite writers said, 'I don't want a future, I want a present. To me this appears to be of greater value. You have a future only when you have no present, and when you have a present, you forget to even think about the future.'
I find myself often worrying about the future and the uncertainties it carries, and I forget that there is a present that needs to be lived. I tend to force myself to make plans by default, to have everything quite organized and controlled.
This doesn’t let me live in the present sometimes, because in my mind there is always this need to look for the comforts of planning.
Porto Covo makes us forget this constant worry we feel about the future, about time.
We are taught that time is money, that we must be faster and more efficient. We live at the rhythm that the world (or external factors/technical innovation) sets for us. There is the internet, social media, public transport, so much information. All faster and faster.
Porto Covo seems to forget that kind of time, that constant speed.
The first thing I noticed was the boundless blue, the sky and sea, that make you forget any need for planning. Then I noticed my surroundings, blending into each other. All around me I could see hills, sand, sea, wild flowers, shades of green, white, blue, red and yellow. This fusion filled me with a desire to breathe, or rather to think of my own breathing.
As if I recognized its rhythm again, and the present was recreated from my breathing and the blue vastness and that wonderful light.
It refuses this and lives at its own rhythm, at the rhythm of the waves which provide the measure.
There are only two options there: you are either the tourist who takes a photograph to show you’ve been there and cross it off the list, or you slow down and you live in the time of Porto Covo. As Robert Walser says, in Porto Covo not wanting a future or the idea of a future is essential.
Forget it for a while and live the present, in the time created by this place. That is the key.
And what is a photograph but frozen time?
This is my humble homage to a place that offered me all sorts of sensations. That pause in time which Porto Covo allows, through its houses from another era, through the blue vastness that pervades it, everything allows for that connection with a place that sets its own time.
It also allows us to find ourselves again, without being touched by the hurry of day-to-day life.
Above all, it made me see that the time that we have is ours, and whenever possible, its rhythm should be created by ourselves.
Thank you, André, for being part of THE WASTED HOUR.
See more pictures by André here:
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