In Intimate Distance, Uncaptured City, Edson Chagas presents several bodies of work developed over the last two decades: Found Not Taken (2008–2014, London, Newport, Luanda), Archives of Absence: Involuntary Images (2019, Namibe), and Common Walls (2022–2024, Lisbon, Brescia). The exhibition brings into dialogue photographic series that are formally very distinct yet closely related conceptually. Through them, the photographer has reflected not only on the medium of photography itself, its imaginative and affective possibilities and the limits of the documentary, but also on the bodily and emotional, physical and psychic experience of inhabiting the urban spaces that have shaped his life. Through various strategies of abstraction, the works evoke different ways of inhabiting Luanda (the city where he was born, lived and to which he continues to return), Lisbon, London and Newport (cities where he lived and studied photography), as well as frequent visits to the city of Namibe, in southern Angola, and the city of Brescia, in northern Italy.
– Ana Balona de Oliveira, curator
– 29.11.2026