CHRONORAMA, 2015
In a dynamic landscape, photography is able to fixate a time in continuum, corollary of the transference of light. If only datable through a support, when devoid of an object, photography, as medium, is timeless as it is light in absolute form, extinct at capture, extant in flux. But because man operates in it, alchemist of the shadow, photography is an anthropic potion, a record of Time, of being in Time, being in a cyclical landscape.
The longitudinal dilation of the platform where the silos lay is emphatic of the middle height (~160) between their top (at the same altitude than the village ~200) and the riverbed, at equal elevation under (~130). Since deprived of the function that determined their form, by reduction to their fundamental structure, the reconfigured pavilions act as a sequence of void monoliths in the territory, supporting new usages. Downstream, parallel to the inactive railway, are the darkroom and lab. The pathway derives to a circular gallery for the exhibit of photographic records, in which time in continuum permanently inscribes itself over the captured time in the support, and culminates on a lightroom confining the sky: a terminus, a structure from the flag stop that retrieves us to a moderate scale and our condition of passengers.
The longitudinal dilation of the platform where the silos lay is emphatic of the middle height (~160) between their top (at the same altitude than the village ~200) and the riverbed, at equal elevation under (~130). Since deprived of the function that determined their form, by reduction to their fundamental structure, the reconfigured pavilions act as a sequence of void monoliths in the territory, supporting new usages. Downstream, parallel to the inactive railway, are the darkroom and lab. The pathway derives to a circular gallery for the exhibit of photographic records, in which time in continuum permanently inscribes itself over the captured time in the support, and culminates on a lightroom confining the sky: a terminus, a structure from the flag stop that retrieves us to a moderate scale and our condition of passengers.
Pavia is a village in Alentejo, a dry region that in the 20th century underwent through an agricultural productivist statal policy that implied the demographic colonization of its plains. The cereal monoculture occupied most of the region, and the montado forest was largely replaced by vast wheat fields, simplifying the landscape where a network of silos interconnected by railway lines, arose with unprecedent heights from the desolate plains in which solitary holm or cork oaks lingered, if hemmed in by rocks whose removal was labourious.
Disregarding the propagandistic visual imagery intended to convey and perpetuate Alentejo as granary of the nation, those plains didn't remain golden and after successive reformation efforts, the impoverished soils had led to the desertion of a territory occupied since the Neolithic.
The remnants of the industrial structures, along with the prehistorical megalithic monuments, integrate indelibly the physical and cultural landscapes, beyond their era. Its adaptation or appropriation is common practice, as they have no appreciable defensibility, either by purpose or neglect. Sitting on mild terrains, granting a good visual dominion, they contrast with their surroundings as immutable assemblies of geometric solids, cast in concrete or carved in stone.
In its vastness, the plain inscribes an inconspicuous stream on a narrow fluvial valley of increased fertility. Similarly, the sparse oaks still remain evergreen over a mantle that undulates from green young herbage to golden dry hay — often baled and pilled.
Disregarding the propagandistic visual imagery intended to convey and perpetuate Alentejo as granary of the nation, those plains didn't remain golden and after successive reformation efforts, the impoverished soils had led to the desertion of a territory occupied since the Neolithic.
The remnants of the industrial structures, along with the prehistorical megalithic monuments, integrate indelibly the physical and cultural landscapes, beyond their era. Its adaptation or appropriation is common practice, as they have no appreciable defensibility, either by purpose or neglect. Sitting on mild terrains, granting a good visual dominion, they contrast with their surroundings as immutable assemblies of geometric solids, cast in concrete or carved in stone.
In its vastness, the plain inscribes an inconspicuous stream on a narrow fluvial valley of increased fertility. Similarly, the sparse oaks still remain evergreen over a mantle that undulates from green young herbage to golden dry hay — often baled and pilled.
