Revisiting the City
Rephotographs by Inês d’Orey and Carlos Lobo from the Muralha Photography Collection
Commissioned by Eduardo Brito, Revisiting the City brings together rephotographs by Inês d’Orey and Carlos Lobo, created from a selection of images from the Muralha Photography Collection, held by Muralha, the Guimarães Association for the Protection of Heritage.
Working from photographs made decades earlier, the two photographers return to the places depicted in the original images, creating new views of Guimarães through the lens of the present. Each rephotograph establishes a dialogue with its source image. Rather than treating the originals simply as historical documents or records of a vanished city, the project uses them as starting points for new narratives.
Rephotography is more than an exercise in returning to a place and reproducing what was once seen. While it can pursue precise technical, physical and temporal correspondence, its possibilities extend beyond a simple comparison between “then and now”. The act of looking again inevitably introduces a new perspective, shaped by the passage of time and by each photographer’s individual visual language.
Inês d’Orey and Carlos Lobo reinterpret the original compositions according to their distinct aesthetic approaches. Their photographs neither replicate nor replace the archival images; instead, they exist as autonomous works that extend them, creating a second chapter in their stories.
Revisiting the City reflects on what changes and what remains, on the erosion and persistence of places, and on the capacity of photography to carry memory across time. By returning to the same sites with a different gaze, the project proposes rephotography as a way of activating the archive — not simply preserving the past, but allowing it to generate new images, readings and narratives.
The Muralha Photography Collection comprises approximately 5,000 original photographs from Foto Moderna and its predecessor, Foto Eléctrica Moderna. The collection includes studio portraits as well as images of Guimarães recorded on glass plates and film, documenting the city from the late 19th century through to the 1960s.
In 2012, the Reimagining Guimarães project, developed by the Cinema and Audiovisual Department of Guimarães 2012 European Capital of Culture, undertook the conservation, scanning, classification, exhibition and publication of this important photographic archive.