João Pina, Tarrafal

Tarrafal

João Pina

Publisher
GOST Books
Year
2024
ISBN
978-1-915423-37-5
Specifications
Hardback, clothbound
228 x 186 mm
284 pages
172 images, full-colour and tritone
2 gate-folds and 5 fold-outs
Texts by the artist, Guilherme da Costa Carvalho and Luiz Alves de Carvalho
English edition GOST Books / Portuguese edition Tinta-da-China

João Pina draws upon his family history to tell the story of the Portuguese concentration camp at Tarrafal, Cape Verde which operated between 1936 and 1974. The visual history of the camp is told through the only known photographs taken inside the camp, combined with correspondence, archives, objects and Pina's own contemporary photographs. Collectively these materials create a new dialogue about the Portuguese fascist regime of the past—and the resistance to it—on the 50th anniversary of its demise. In 1949, Pina's grandfather Guilherme da Costa Carvalho—a young communist militant—was sent to the camp. Later that year Guilherme's parents were granted unprecedented permission to visit their son and using a Rolleiflex camera they photographed all the living prisoners and the graves of the ones who had died in the camp. This extensive visual record—the only one ever made inside the concentration camp—was created with the intent of reporting back to the families of the other prisoners. Seventy years later, in 2019, Pina began investigating a box in his family archive containing the negatives, contact sheets and vintage prints.

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