Silence

Silence explores contemporary urban emotions like loneliness and anonymity. The book evolves in a constant dialogue between private and public situations. With portraits of intimate situations and images of urban scenes, José Pedro Cortes’s work deals with the struggle of accessing human presence in the contemporary City – a silent and layered presence hidden behind the surface of things or people; that always seems distant to the viewer. These ideas of blockade and intimacy are played together in a book structure that borrows ideas from film or literature.

José Pedro Cortes (Porto, 1976) studied at Kent Institute of Art and Design (MA Photography) and, since 2004, has been exhibiting regularly in places like Centro Português de Fotografia (Porto, Portugal), Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (Lisbon, Portugal) and White Space Gallery(London, UK). His work is held in some public collections. Silence is his debut book.