Permanent Post-Colonial Studies Seminar: “Present! Africans and Afrodescendants in Porto”

The next Permanent Seminar on Post-Colonial Studies will take place on April 19, at 3 pm, at the Polytechnic Institute of Bragança, via Zoom. “Present! Africans and Afrodescendants in Oporto” is the theme to be developed by José Sérgio.

Based on the experience of the exhibition “Presents! Africans and Afrodescendants in Porto” exhibition and the preparation work for the book edition that will give continuity to the project, a discussion is proposed on the way in which the arts, and photography, in particular, can be an instrument for promoting the visibility and self-esteem of communities that are under-represented or barely visible in the Portuguese public space.

José Sérgio was born in Maputo, Mozambique, in 1970. He started working as a teenager in photography at the cultural association Casa Velha and completed his training at the Centro de Documentação e Formação Fotográfica. He integrated the photography team at the National Institute for the Development of Education from 1989 to 1994 and was, in parallel, photojournalist at Jornal de Notícias and Desafio. In 1998, he joined Médecins Sans Frontières, for which he supervised several health and sanitation projects and ensured the photographic coverage of the Cholera Programme.
Based in Portugal since 2000, he was a photographer for the weekly newspapers Blitz (2000-2006) and Sol (2006-2015). At the service of this newspaper, and as part of a continued work on minorities living in Portugal and their relationship with the host country, he won twice, along with journalist Ana Cristina Câmara, the Communication Award “For Cultural Diversity”, awarded by the High Commission for Migrations: first in 2012, for the reportage “An Orchestra of All”, and then in 2015, for the reportage “Foreigner, what do you see?”.
Since 2018, he has been seeking to flesh out a personal research around themes such as immigration, African and/or Afro-descendant communities and the relations between Portugal and Africa in the current post-colonial context. Two solo exhibitions have already resulted from this research, “A Viagem que Guerra Junqueiro Nunca Fez” (Casa-Museu Guerra Junqueiro, Porto, 2019), and “Presentes! Africans and Afrodescendants in Porto” (Mira Forum, Porto, 2020). He is currently preparing a book from this last exhibition.

[Posted: 08-04-2022]