Exhibition ‘Landscape’ at the Lamego and Varosa Valley Photography Biennial

From 7 August to 21 October, the 3rd Lamego and Varosa Valley Photography Biennial will present ‘Landscape’, an unprecedented exhibition of the work of José Zagalo Ilharco, an amateur photographer of great merit who has won national and international awards.

The exhibition curated by Rui Pinheiro, which was on display at the Soares dos Reis National Museum between January and April this year, is now coming to the Lamego Museum, the city where José Zagalo Ilharco was born on 31 October 1860.

He devoted himself especially to landscape photography, focussing on Matosinhos, Leça da Palmeira, Porto, Lamego, Guarda and Penafiel. His photographic oeuvre, comprising more than 260 images, also includes a series of portraits of his family and friends, as well as the houses where he lived and their gardens.

The title of this exhibition is inspired by the homonym of the photograph of the River Sousa, which won a prize in Brussels in 1895.

As a young adult, José Zagalo Ilharco settled in the city of Porto, where he became a successful businessman, among others in the insurance and commerce sectors. In his spare time, he also dedicated himself to various cultural and recreational activities, especially amateur photography and floristry, interests he shared with his friend Aurélio Paz dos Reis, a pioneering Portuguese filmmaker.

José Zagalo Ilharco was a founding member and director of the Real Velo Club do Porto. In 1893, the year it was founded, he photographed a group of board members and the Velodrome, located at the back of the Palácio das Carrancas, where the Soares dos Reis National Museum is housed. José Zagalo Ilharco died suddenly on 5 November 1910, in Porto, at the age of 50.

Landscape is the theme of this year’s Lamego and Varosa Valley Photography Biennial. In addition to the aesthetic dimension of the exhibitions, the Biennale’s curators (Manuela Matos Monteiro and João Lafuente) wanted the works presented to produce a critical reflection on the role of humans – collective and individual – in the design of the landscape and the way we inhabit it on a daily basis.