15.09 —28.10.23
Museu D.Diogo de Sousa
R. dos Bombeiros Voluntários s/n
Tuesday→Sunday: 10:30am–5:30pm
Encontros da Imagem, with over 30 years of existence, is a non-profit Cultural Association that organizes Encontros da Imagem – International Festival of Photography and Visual Arts in the city of Braga, Portugal. The festival promotes classic and contemporary photography through the exhibition of works by established and emerging authors.
The award Discovery Awards 2023 aims to show and give visibility to photographers and photographic projects that are not yet well known in the field. Every year, around thirty photographers are selected, with half having exhibitions at the festival and the other half having their work presented in a projection format. The screening of the 15 selected photography projects takes place at the Galeria do Largo do Paço between the 15th of September and the 28th of October. The exhibitions are distributed through various spaces according to the two themes Environmental Futures and Cultural Futures.
Finalists in exhibition:
Agnieszka Sejud - Mimesis
Akshay Mahajan - People of Clay
Chloé Milos Azzopardi - Non technological Devices
Cinzia Romanin - Transcendence
Davide Degano - Romanzo Meticcio
Emilia Pennanen - Mirage
Gabriele Cecconi - TiàWùK
Glauco Canalis - The darkest the night, the brighter the stars
Hahn & Hartung - Mother of Water
Julia Gat - Khamsa khamsa khamsa
María Sánchez Martín - Wastelands
Marta Bogdanska - SHIFTERS
Toma Gerzha - ctrl + r
‘Khamsa khamsa khamsa’ — “five” in Arabic, repeated three times like a protective incantation — is an autobiographical visual narrative in the form of a family archive. At first glance, it is where Julia Gat tells the story of her childhood and adolescence growing up with four brothers and sisters educated by alternative teaching methods.
However, underneath images that look like a family album, a photographer’s writing emerges. Julia Gat tells her story by gradually defining how she sees the faces and growing bodies of those around her, sometimes in peaceful Mediterranean landscapes. Portraits of friends and domestic scenes punctuate the work, which is structured around five protagonists: sisters Sara and Nina, brothers Michael and Jonathan, and Julia, the fifth sibling, who projects herself onto them behind her lens. “When I was ten, I promised myself never to forget how children see the world,” she says. “Everything’s new. Imagination blends in with reality and the unknown is exciting.” Documenting her everyday life is the running thread of the artist’s work, allowing her to connect the adult photographer to her childhood sensibility.
