Fragmentos de uma vida inteira
This project is entirely dedicated to Prof. Isabel Cottinelli, founder of APPDA (the Portuguese Association for Developmental Disorders and Autism) and all its members.
Throughout my entire life, the presence of people with autism has been felt for as long as I can remember. Both my parents were/are psychiatrists and they worked/work in APPDA. Fresh are the memories I have of playing music, football and painting with kids and adults from this association entire days while both my parents were working. It was amazing because all of them were capable of playing with me and vice versa. Everything was always so pure, genuine and therefore it was somehow raw. Raw in every aspect of it. Raw in feelings, in demonstrations of love, hatred, confort, joy…
For me, the best sentence I heard that explains what it is to be an autistic is the following: “A autistic person is simply an eternal child observer of this world, vulnerable, but very intense inside”. I think that is the reason why I've always had an intense relationship with these people ever since I was young. I always knew they were somehow different but it seemed that in a lot of ways we understood each other.
Time passed ever since, and a gap of years as well. More specifically in April/May 2021, while I was attending the Professional Photography Course at the IPF (Portuguese Institute of Photography), I was given a final assignment to present. It was when the idea of doing something with this subject came in. Actually it was the very first time I was “doing” something related to Documentary Photography.
The following photographs show the most intuitive, natural and beloved look of what I feel about what I consider fragments of
an entire life of these people. What I catch with my camera is, under my comprehension, a small fragment of an entire life of these people. and this is the aim of my project. These people are autistic not just for one day, not for a week, not even for one year. This is who they are. What we see and experience when we are with them is just a small moment of their lives. At this precise moment, they are still Autistic. it is their core. It is not something detached from who they are. This is why I consider this as an eternal project, that I aim to give it continuity as long as I am alive.
Between a lot of observation of private moments, collective activities, games, musical rehearsals, mere procrastinations, thoughts and daily meals, I show simply what it is to live always different in so many aspects and equal throughout a different way of seeing the world just throughout a spectrum of two colours.
“Fragmentos de uma Vida Inteira” is a continuous visual story of these people. Observation of private moments, collective activities, games, musical rehearsals, mere procrastinations, thoughts and daily meals will make us feel so close and so distant at the same time from them. It is therefore shown in a different way (monochromatic) from how we see the world (in colors), focusing only on the light that emphasises the emotion present in the moment: Naive but Genuine and Intense.
