Ricardo Nunes is a documentary photographer, graphic designer and photo­book publisher at The Velvet Cell, currently based in Bremen.

Family Time

Exhibition
2023

For Sale

2019 – 2022

Von Wolkenschäden

2023

Abendbrot

Die Zeit
2022

Treibgut

2023

Manmade

ongoing
since 2020

A One Storied Country

2022

Places of Disquiet

2017

Selected Portraits

2015 – 2023

The Hunter, the Woman & the Hut

2022

Defensive Architecture

2017

Was wären wir ohne euch

Zeit Online
2022

Tolyatti

2019

The Western Gate

2016

Free Chico

Spiegel Online
2018

Informal Mosques

2015

Ricardo Alves Ferreira Nunes is a documentary photographer, graphic designer and photo­book publisher. While emphasizing on photography, he designs and publishes books and is therefore part of The Velvet Cell, an independent photo­book publishing house based in Berlin. Besides of that he also teaches at Kunstschule Wandsbek. Currently based in Bremen (Germany), but travelling several times per year to Portugal.

Exhibitions

2023

  • 46. Bremer Förderpreis für Bildende Kunst

    (Städtische Galerie Bremen)

2018

  • Between the Lines

    (Galerie Mitte, Bremen)

  • Die andere Sicht

    (Osthaus Museum, Hagen)

  • Gute Aussichten. Junge deutsche Fotografie

    (Deichtorhallen Hamburg)

  • Gute Aussichten. Junge deutsche Fotografie

    (Goethe Institut Hanoi Vietnam)

  • Gute Aussichten. Junge deutsche Fotografie

    (Goethe Institut Mexico City Mexico)

  • Gute Aussichten. Junge deutsche Fotografie

    (Landesmuseum Koblenz)

  • Gute Aussichten. Junge deutsche Fotografie

    (NRW-Forum Düsseldorf)

2017

  • Beograd — White City

    (Hinterconti, Hamburg)

  • The Modern City

    (Spedition, Bremen)

2016

  • Conflict?

    (Markuskirche, Hannover)

  • Photokina

    (Leica-Galerie, Upcoming Masters, Köln)

2015

  • Crisis — What Crisis

    (Galerie Mitte im Kubo, Bremen)

Awards

2017

  • Gute Aussichten. Junge deutsche Fotografie

    New German Photograpy

  • International Photography Grant

    Shortlist “Best Architecture”

2016

  • International Photography Grant

    Shortlist “Best Story” and “City”

Biography

since 2019

  • Teaching at Kunstschule Wandsbek

    Hamburg / Bremen

since 2018

2014 – 2017

  • Master of Arts, Culture and Identity

    University of the Arts Bremen (GER)

2010 – 2014

  • Bachelor of Arts, Communication Design

    University of Applied Sciences and Art Dortmund (GER)

2012

  • Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology

    Bangalore (IND)

Feel free to get in contact
info@ricardonunes.de
+49 177 684 1579

 

Follow me on Instagram
@afnunes_

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Places of Disquiet

2017

In 2016 and 2017 I travelled several times through Portugal, following old memories of places I might have been. Since I was born, I had to visit the land of my parents to spend time with distant relatives, who lived in commuter towns on the outskirts of city centers. Many images of my past are formed by rushing through unknown cities or small villages around the center of Portugal. For a long time, I couldn’t relate to the attractive stories I had come to hear about the country from others. At the age of 21, I explored for myself the historically overwhelming center of Lisbon for the first time.

The images of a Portuguese city though, still arose from my former memories of places like Barreiro, Queluz or Guarda. The urbanization of Portugal was accelerated after the fall of Salazar’s dictatorship in 1974. The following and abrupt de-colonialization of African and Asian countries brought many immigrants to Portugal. Housing shortage and accession to the European Union in 1986 consider­ably speeded up the modernization process and strongly shaped the appearance of Portuguese cities. Nowadays, lack of comforts like private space, supermarkets, parking spaces or increasing rental fees leave several historical districts abandoned. The ongoing financial crisis with rising poverty and criminality, as well as ghettoization, heightens the tense atmosphere. As news of forest fires and police raids were reported, I was told that the crisis and the heat are driving people crazy.

I discovered the travelogue Journey to Portugal by the Portuguese Nobel Prize-winning author José Saramago released in 1994. Saramago travels through hundreds of villages and cities. While he romanticizes historical architecture and landscapes, his writing is scattered with narrations of buildings that appear like neurotic dreams. It seemed then, that Saramago was describing the Portugal of my childhood. It became important to decipher and describe this discomfort towards Portugal. A country with a formerly glorious past. Seemingly empty cities. A state of continuous melancholy. A fear of being spoken to. A fear of revealing that I am a foreigner. The light isn’t warm, it scorches skin, trees and landscapes.

This journey to Portugal is an exploration of the feeling I carry— a simultaneity of foreignness and familiarity. The photographs are a portrait of a country I am choicelessly connected to. The loneliness that overcomes me in Portugal still has no release.