Photographic Conference
A Portuguese (hi)story in a Ribatejo village
Fausto Giaccone
April 30th, 2009, 17:00, CES Seminar Room
Presentation
During the conference Fausto Giaccone will project and comment on his pictures concerning the Portuguese Agrarian Reform carried out in the course of three decades in the village of Couço, Ribatejo.
The author passed through Portugal in 1975, following the path of so many other photographers that discovered in the Carnation Revolution a reason to visit the Iberian Peninsula corner. He then returned to compare the pictures he had taken with the people by him photographed that had grown in every sense. And he photographed again. He now returns, to reinvent that relation, in an approach that time allows to polish and rewrite, always within the sensations set in the original pictures.
In this session of memories and evocation of time, spaces and lives, Fausto Giaccone will be joined by Joaquim Canejo Jr., son of the rural worker that led the occupation of land captured by Fausto Giaccone and Inês Cardoso, curator of the grand exhibit that took place in 2006 in Couço.
This experience is part of a set of events the organizers have been programming around the theme and the relations between Memory and History and prepares the arrival in Coimbra of Fausto Giaccone’s grand photographic exhibition, “The Agrarian Reform in Couço: Reencounter with A Portuguese History” integrated in the cultural programme of the International Colloquium Memory and History that CES will host next September.
History of a Photographic Report
On August 31st, 1975, the Italian photojournalist Fausto Giaccone escorted a journey of latifundium occupation in the village of Couço, Ribatejo region. Of the day remains a photographic testimony that reveals us all the dynamics and joy lived by the rural workers, as Agrarian Reform in the Southern fields was carried out by them.
Eleven years after, the photographer returned to the village, bringing along the photographs of that special day in search for the participants of the journey of 75. A surprise encounter of which resulted a new photographic register, in which those that were captured in the photographs years before reunite with their memory/collective memory of the village.
In 2005, Fausto Giaccone visits Couço for the third time in the extent of a report for “Diário”, an Italian weekly newspaper, highlighting the 30 years of the Portuguese Agrarian Reform. The portfolio “The Agrarian Reform in Couço – Reencountering a Portuguese History” is a journey achieved through the photographs by Fausto Giaccone in a milestone moment of Portuguese history and his reencounter with the inhabitants of Couço. Also, it reflects the trace of the history of the Agrarian Reform in Couço and the impact it had in the life of the population, a glance on the time loped, a collective share of memories between generations, dreams, and a reflection on the doubts and desires casted on the time present/future.
Biographic notes of the participants
Fausto Giaccone
Born in Palermo and living in Milan, he is one of the most famous Italian photojournalists, with a career that spans over 40 years, and with grand photography reports from all over the world. In 1975 he escorted the land occupation movement within the Agrarian Reform, in Couço, a village in Ribatejo.
He has returned to Portugal and Couço on a regular basis and the numerous photographs he has taken truly capture today the family saga of many of the families that led the Agrarian Reform in Couço.
Inês Cardoso
Degree in Art History. Curator and responsible for the itinerancy of the Exhibit “The Agrarian Reform in Couço – Reencountering a Portuguese History”, which took place in 2006 and subsequently shown in Casa do Alentejo, Lisbon and the Municipal Gallery of Barreiro.
Joaquim Canejo Jr.
President of the Couço Consumer Cooperative.
Son of one of the most important leaders of Couço rural workers he is today the guardian of one of the most important memories of that era.