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Lisboa, Cidade Triste e Alegre

by Costa Martins & Victor Palla

Photographs: Costa Martins, Victor Palla

Text: Gerry Badger, Eugénio de Andrade, António Botto, Álvaro de Campos, Orlando da Costa, José Gomes Ferreira, Sebastiao da Gama, Dabid Mourao-Ferreira, Sidónio Muralha, Almanda Negreiros, Alexandre O'Neil

Publisher: Pierre Von Kleist Editions

175 pages

Year: 2009

ISBN: 978-972-99825-3-8

Comments: condition new in original plastic. special reprint edition for the 50th anniversary; 27.9 x 22.5 cm

For three years architects Victor Palla (1922-2005) and Costa Martins (1922-2006) recorded Lisbon street life shooting naturally lit black and white photographs influenced in no small part by the Italian neo-realist cinema of the time. Often their most engaging subjects were found in the then poor quarters of Bairro Alto and Alfama.

Interspersing the carefully laid out photographs in the book is the work of Lisbon’s poets, including poems by the melancholy recluse and creator of alter egos Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935). Certainly it must be the sadness of the poetry that is refered to in the title as there are no images here that evoke much sorrow, in fact some photographs of smiling shopkeepers are more picturesque than is helpful. Was life always so convivial during the Salazar regime?

Partly it is the breadth of coverege that gives the Hungarian exile the advantage. Palla and Martins produced a wonderful volume, but they never match the caught moments and eye for graphic form of the master Brassaï. Certainly some of the more touristy looking images would hve been better edited out (or, in that perrenial trick used when presenting lesser work, printed very large).

Of course it is often easier for an outsider to see the wholeness of a place, but then again Brassaï was a great photographer.

The dust jacket is printed with quotes on photography by a host of master photographers from Ansel Adams to Minor White. However, the quotes do not refer to the book.

Mentioned by Parr / Badger THE PHOTOBOOK: A HISTORY Volume I

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