STUDENT NEWS: João Pina (VA ’26) Launches Tarrafal
Photographer and current VCFA MFA in Visual Art student João Pina (VA ’26) has published his latest book, Tarrafal (2024), with GOST Books.
Pina is a freelance photographer whose works have been published in D Magazine, Days Japan, El Pais, Expresso, GEO, La Vanguardia, New York Times, New Yorker, Newsweek, Stern, Time, Visão, and other platforms. His previous photography books include Por Teu Livre Pensamento (2007), CONDOR (2014), and 46750 (2018). Tarrafal draws upon Pina’s family history and the real stories from the Portuguese concentration camp at Tarrafal, Cape Verde.
As Pina explains of the project:
“Tarrafal is my fourth monograph where I draw upon my own family history to tell the story of the Portuguese concentration camp at Tarrafal, Cape Verde which operated between 1936 and 1974. The visual history of the camp is told through the only known photographs taken inside the Tarrafal camp, combined with correspondence, archives, objects and my own contemporary photographs. Collectively these materials create a new dialogue about the Portuguese fascist regime of the past—and the resistance to it—on the 50th anniversary of its demise. The story behind it is the fact that my maternal grandfather was sent to Tarrafal in 1949 as a political prisoner, and his parents managed to get permission to visit the camp and brought a camera to photograph portraits of all of the living prisoners and the graves of the prisoners who passed in the camp. Upon their return to mainland Portugal, they went to visit all these families and delivered the photographs as news of their loved ones (most of them have been in the camp since 1936). Based on this history and on the archive that my family kept all these years, I started researching and creating my own images in response to these incredible vintage photographs.”
On the impact of the project, Pina hopes the book will bring a greater understanding and awareness around the colonial history of Portugal. As Pina says,
“I hope the project contributes to giving younger generations a clear understanding of what the Portuguese dictatorship did to the ones who opposed the regime, and at the same time, inform those who know very little about the fascist and colonial history of Portugal about its idiosyncrasy, that also helps to explain today’s challenges that Portugal and its former colonies in Africa still face.
Being so personal, this project had an obvious immediate impact in me. Those photographs are made by my family members and portray my own grandfather and his comrades. The fact is that I never met him, since he passed before I was born, after having spent nearly 17 years in jail for political reasons and died due to the lack of medical attention while he was incarcerated. But the impact this history had on me, didn’t start with Tarrafal. This is my third book dealing with issues of historical memory in places that I have lived and care for deeply. So I would say, Tarrafal is the result of history in a creative person working in the visual world.”
Pina and the book are currently on tour. On October 23 there will be a conference on Tarrafal in the Heyman Center at Columbia University in New York City; on November 8th there will be a book signing at Paris Photo GOST Books Stand in Paris, France; and on November 20 there will be a 10×10 Salon in the Center for Book Arts in New York City.
Learn more about João Pina, Tarrafal, and how you can support the project at www.joao-pina.com.