All images in this story are reproduced with permission granted by Paulo Nozolino and Galeria Quadrado Azul.

In this story I share with you the career of a Portuguese photographer. From very soon he became a reference for me and is undoubtedly a major figure in contemporary photography. One of his catalogues was one of the first books in art photography I had the chance to admire. It was part of the library at the photographic section in college where I learned the process of black and white photography. The high contrast prints as explored by Nozolino were in fact a major influence for some of the contributors and colleagues at the section.

Personally, me and my friends shared also the same interest in the Arab culture as Nozolino, though we kept most of our travel limited to the south of Spain. For several years our preferred holiday places were the small towns of Andaluzia, going around Ronda and the Pueblos Brancos. Looking at Nozolino’s images reminds me the night and low light ambience in the streets of this towns.

Nozolino was born in Portugal in 1955 and has lived in London, Paris and Portugal. His formation was in the seventies. First in Painting at the Beaux-Art Society in Lisbon and then in Creative Photography at the London College of Printing. He works in 35 mm black and white film with a Leica.[ 1 ] Most of his work is produced while traveling but it is not documentary photography although there surely are reflexes of his social concerns. One can suppose some of his images are critics on how society has evolved in the modern times.

His printing work is one of rigorous, technical demanding craftsmanship. The shadows fill the eyes and when browsing his books I feel always eager for the next image. Admiring his work gives a feeling of someone who digs on reality to the bone. Nozolino is moved by the people out there that feel melancholic, who are cold or miserable, without food or hope. His pictures are born in the streets, not from the comfort of the studio or some predefined concept.

“My reputation as a photographer as always been that of someone who is sticking the knife where it hurts. It starts with myself and then obviously the others have to taste the knife too.” [ 2 ] – Paulo Nozolino

At far sight there is a connection to a standing artistic culture of conceptualization, using representations to reflect the sense of the artwork, in an approach that can be considered cinematic. His technique seems to take some influence from the pictorial art. But unlike others, such as the czech Josef Sudek, who play with light, Nozolino takes his mastery from the shadows and high tonal density.

A closer look at his work will reveal an instinctive approach to this field of art, with portraits and daily scenes that capture the moment in a direct and informal way. Each photograph alone doesn’t raise our mind to any preset idea, although they feel sufficiently exploratory. But browsing through Nozolino’s books and sequences a transforming experience of great semantic and aesthetic value is achieved. Banal subjects turn into powerful messages. His choices and an highly intuitive approach make the work take form, the result for the viewer are pages that talk to each other. The artist stands high on this important pillar of the foundations of art and documentary photography.

The use of lights and shadows makes the print transcend the image taken, stepping away from the reality and thus rejecting the quality of the simile. It is unequivocal that the artist was there and captured the moment but the final product has unique character.

“Let’s put it this way: pictures are taken, pictures wait in boxes, and then I wait till I have something to say. I can go for months without working, just thinking. The form is always the book. It comes before the exhibition. The sequence of the images for me is the key to photography. The important thing in sequences, in photography, poetry or music, is not really the images, the words or the notes; it’s the space between them! How they breathe!” [ 2 ] — Paulo Nozolino

Nozolino has a unique ability to disassemble reality and bring about the details of the restlessness of the subjects he photographs. In the places he travels to, he manages to capture the perpetual movement that is characteristic to a lifetime together with its oscillations. Since he visited Auschwitz and Sarajevo the events that occurred there have become indelible in his mind. Knowing this, a viewer can conclude that this is the source of what is melancholic is Nozolino’s images.

To push this feelings away a powerful narrative rises from the artist pictures. First, the documentary approach would be an enough connecting bridge for the viewer to become aware of the people photographed and their human condition. This proximity already starts to destroy what divides the viewer from the viewed and enforces us to recognize our shared humanity and improve our own self-acceptance.
As I have this enduring passion for black and white photography it is clear for me that the suppression of the colors and Nozolino’s use of dark tones is a powerful medium to transmit this feelings of awareness. He has a superior ability to use photography as an instrument for the imagination to create memories that enchant one’s gaze. There is little demand to process details, the observer in not stuck at admiring an isolated image but he wishes to live the story to which the next image will add more information. As in any matured art object, and specially in Paulo Nozolino’s work, observing causes a feeling of deep invasion of our own privacy.

( freely adapted from [3] and [4] )

In 1999 a new approach by using triptychs and other poly-number grouping of images started for Nozolino. Relative to a stand alone image, this control of the composition increases the words the images speak, feeding the semantic discourse. Separate in time, but together in the composition, the spatial takes the importance here. The resulting exhibition “Usura” explores references to actual themes as the Holocaust, the Invasion of Iraq or the Chernobyl accident. Underlying are concepts from religion, death to immigration. The images make sense together but not in full, they talk to us of an uncertain destiny where the totality of the understanding is left open, maybe to be realized by each viewer.

“I take very simple photos and, for nearly twenty years, I’ve only taken vertical photos. Is that a reaction to cinema, which I no longer watch? My field of vision has become increasingly narrow, for, what interests me, is a refusal of the grandiose. My work is an apology of the daily, of the banal, of the poor.” [ 3 ] — Paulo Nozolino

post scriptum

“The beginning of Far Cry shows «road pictures», but then I came to Portugal. This uncompleted project was called Limbo. It was shown in Arles in 1986. It was my attempt to describe Portugal. I didn’t come to any conclusion. I know it’s a place of nostalgia, a small country facing the sea, people have a huge inferiority complex. All this is very negative. I have to say that I hate the reasons why tourists like Portugal: always sunny, the food is good, the people are nice. You know, we are not like that. We are the opposite. You have to read Pessoa to know who we are. We are a strange bunch, somehow similar to Russians.” [ 2 ] — Paulo Nozolino

Nozolino is right in my opinion. If a tourist stayed long enough in the company of this bunch, first thing that would happen would be hearing bad things about his friends from the local. Fernando Pessoa in his essay “The Anarchist Banker” does an apology of an individualist that, to conquer his freedom and independence from the state, figured out that making money, huge amounts of money! was his only way. In the nineteen twenties he assumed all other anarchists were only theorizing on the subject. He was the only intelligent one, which I would guess is another belief trademarked by the Portuguese.

Reading Sources

[1.] https://www.infopedia.pt/apoio/artigos/$paulo-nozolino

[2.]https://rheinsprung11.unibas.ch/fileadmin/documents/Edition_PDF/Ausgabe05/Dialog.pdf

[3.] https://leica-camera.blog/2015/11/27/there-where-nothing-happens-paulo-nozolino-at-paris-photo-2015/

[4.] Ph. Paulo Nozolino, Imprensa Nacional (BOOK)

Good resources of Images from the author

[A.]https://www.quadradoazul.pt/pt/qa/artist/paulo/

[B.] https://www.pressreader.com/portugal/jornal-de-negocios/20180511/281822874436966

[C.] https://www.wolf-books.com/products/paulo-nozolino-penumbra