My grandfather João died in January 1989 and I was born
one year and three months after. I got to know him by looking at old
photos, smelling his smoking pipes and his old books and by hearing
stories. He was a cod fishing ship captain. He sailed to Norway and
Newfoundland in Canada and spent most of the time abroad at the sea.
Some
years ago, my grandmother found my grandfather’s diary from the late
40’s and brought it to my sisters and I could read it. He wrote simply
and beautifully about the life at sea, about feeling so hopeful
sometimes and so pessimist about life at other times, about feeling
unsure of how to spend one’s life. “Será esta a minha vida?”(Is this the
right life for me?) he wonders in one of the entries.
I also read about his fondness for photography, which made me guess that I got that interest from him.
This
project is an attempt to search for my grandfather and to rediscover
the town where I grew up. After several years living far away from Vila
do Conde, I started spending more time in my hometown. The motivation
for the project came from contradictory feelings of nostalgia on one
hand, and on the other, a willingness to discover this place, to return
to my childhood, to find “home”.
I started exploring the town at dawn,
while it still sleeps, enjoying the moments when the public places are
free from people and noise, and the air is filled with mist. So I currently keep going near
the sea and the river, places that were always appealing to me and where
I can observe the boats and fishermen arriving from the ocean.
Likewise, Vila do Conde’s history originates in the river and the sea.
Its port was an important harbour in the Portuguese discoveries dating
from the XVI century.
In this way, I also explore my
grandfather’s life. I sit at his desk, I read his diary, I hold his
captain’s hat in my hands. I look at the photos he took in the middle of
frozen seas. I take his Canon AE-1 - the last camera he used -, I join
local fishermen for some fishing nights.
This series explores the
feeling Milan Kundera displays in his novel “Nostalgia”, where he
explains the etymological origin of the word: “The return, in Greek, is
called ”nostos “. “Algos” means suffering. Nostalgia is therefore the
suffering caused by the unsatisfied desire to return”.
Inês Marinho is a photographer from Portugal. She studied communication design at the Fine Arts school in Porto and professional photography at IED - Madrid. Since her early age she’s been fascinated by stories, both in books and films. Today she uses photography as the basis for her own storytelling. Photography is her way to discover, explore and express herself and the reality around her.
