JTF (just the facts): Published in 2024 by GOST Books (here). Hardcover (22.8 x 18.6 cm), 284 pages, with 172 color and black-and-white photographs. Includes texts by the artist, Guilherme da Costa Carvalho, and Luiz Alves de Carvalho. Design and production by GOST. (Cover and spread shots below.)
Comments/Context: Tarrafal, a new photobook by Portuguese photographer João Pina, looks at the stories of people who spent time imprisoned in an infamous Portuguese concentration camp. The title of the book refers to a prison located in the village of Chão Bom, on the island of Santiago in Cape Verde (a Portuguese colony at that time). It was founded in 1936 under António de Oliveira Salazar’s fascist rule, and was operated through the mid 1970s. The book offers a layered visual history of the camp, via images taken inside, correspondence, archival documents, recovered objects, as well as Pina’s own photographs.
As a photobook, Tarrafal packs in quite a lot of material. A photograph of four men seated with their faces obscured appears on its clothbound cover, setting the tone for a narrative of deliberate erasure and disappearance. Inside, the photographs are interwoven with multiple texts and captions, and numerous fold outs open to reveal additional layers of information. The book lays flat making this interaction more enjoyable, and the understated but refined design similarly immerses us in the complex narrative.
Tarrafal opens with a small black-and-white photograph of a smiling man. He wears a white shirt and his hands are in the pockets of his elegant pleated trousers. This is the artist’s grandfather, who was one of 600 political prisoners housed at Tarrafal. From the short text that follows, we learn that Pina’s grandfather, Guilherme da Costa Carvalho, was sent to the camp in 1949. That same year, Pina’s great grandparents were given unprecedented access to visit him, and they brought a camera to take photos of their son and his fellow prisoners (to report back to their family members).
The opening sequence shows photographs of various other prisoners, with captions explaining why they were imprisoned and other details. One spread has two portraits. Antonio Nunes, in a suit with a tie, was arrested in 1936 for his participation in the Naval Revolt; he served a total of fifteen and a half years. On the facing page is Fernando Vicente, who was also arrested in 1936 for being one of the ringleaders of the Naval Revolt and a member of the Portuguese Communist Party; he spent seventeen years in prison. These portraits were taken by Pina’s great grandparents, and offer some comfort and dignity. The simple pictures document a dark time in history, while carrying out an act of resistance.
The book includes numerous letters and telegrams exchanged between Pina’s grandfather and great grandfather between 1949 and 1951; the originals are reproduced in the book along with the English translations. These letters inspired Pina to write his own letters to his grandfather and great grandfather, as he was working on the project. This extensive correspondence is supported by photographs from the family archives as well as Pina’s own photographs taken during his trips to Cape Verde.
The photographs Pina took during his visits offer a surreal parallel narrative of sorts, with serene scenes of a ferry ride, beaches, roads, and landscapes standing in contrast to the place’s dark history, with bright colors capturing the rhythms of a beautiful place. But various still life images set against blank white backgrounds quickly deflate this fantasy. One image depicts chess pieces made from bread and used by political prisoners to play the game. A few pages later, there is a violin thought to have been made and played inside the camp.
Another section of the book contains photographs of the artist’s great grandmother, as she places flowers on the graves of political prisoners who died between 1936 and 1948. The foldouts open to additional shots, making the moments particularly moving. Her “dance-like gestures, sometimes mournful, sometimes elegant” as she places the flowers bring dignity to the prisoners who died fighting Salazar’s dictatorship.
Tarrafal ends with a poignant letter from the artist to his grandfather. Among other things, he writes that working on this project helped him to break down certain myths that he didn’t know he carried. He also acknowledges that his generation knows little or nothing about the history of the place. Pina ends recalling a phrase he heard “a time without words is also a time without time”; applying it to his own life, he says “I have been giving words to time, and trying to build, with these photographs, the memory of something I never experienced myself.”
In the past couple of years, a number of photobooks have unraveled complex family histories, often revealing more universal dimensions and stories. In Here and There (reviewed here), Jillian Edelstein uses the lens of her own family history to look at the universal theme of human displacement. In I carry Her photo with Me (reviewed here), Lindokuhle Sobekwa offers an intimately personal visual journey to recover the story of a lost sister. And the Brazilian photographer Leticia Valverdes travels to Portugal to visit the birth country of her grandmother, ultimately connecting with the local community of a small village (in Dear Ana, reviewed here).
Tarrafal is a carefully considered and thoughtful photobook, an intimate and evocative journey that delves into history and memory. Working on this body of work allowed Pina to reconnect with his grandfather’s past and bring light to the stories of many essentially erased people. The book creates a humanizing story of stubborn anti-fascist resistance, and feels particularly urgent at a time when far right politics once again threatens ascendency across the western world.
Collector’s POV: João Pina does not appear to have gallery representation at this time. Interested collectors should likely follow up directly with the artist via his website (linked in the sidebar).