The guided tour with Alfredo Cunha is part of the public programme of the exhibition “Time After Time”. The exhibition takes visitor on a journey through Cunha’s work, featuring more than 500 photographs. Among them, there are many images that stem from the history of our country before and after 25th of April 1974, and which help us to better understand the essence of Portugal. Alfredo Cunha photographed Salgueiro Maia during the morning that gave us back our freedom and was the author of other iconic images, such as the containers arriving from the colonies at the Padrão dos Descobrimentos, or the “sliced statues” (see photo “São Tomé e Príncipe 1975”). Realizing that he was living an important historical moment, he felt the need to register the Portuguese decolonization, in what he considers was his first major reportage.
Alfredo Cunha was also able to capture historical events and anonymous faces, all over the world, with an attentive and open eye to the other and his circumstances. From the fall of Ceauşescu, in Romania (in 1989) to the wars in Iraq (where he was for the first time in 2003 and returned often the following 10 years), Alfredo Cunha was there – reporting on the wars and sites of crisis around the globe. He contributed to various media outlets and decided to formally end his career as a journalist in 2012, left the posts of editor and director of photography and became a freelance photojournalist. In this context, he took part in the project commemorating the 30th anniversary of AMI “Three Decades of Hope”, which led him to travel with Luis Pedro Nunes to countries such as Niger, Romania, Bangladesh, India, Haiti, Sri Lanka, Guinea Bissau, and Nepal, and which resulted in his book “All Hope in the World”. Having published his reports in Expresso and Público, the author considers that he has practised a new form of journalism: humanitarianism.
