PEGO NEGRO
By Bruno Leite Silva
© Bruno Leite Silva
“The river that everything drags is known as violent, but nobody calls violent the margins that arrest him.”
― Bertolt Brecht
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Pego Negro means “Dark Drain”
Pego Negro is the name of a small village on the outskirts of Porto, crossed by the Rio Tinto river. In recent decades, due to urban expansion, part of the river has been intubated and several ecological crimes have made Rio Tinto one of the most polluted rivers in the north of the country.
Using the river water to develop some of the black & white film that he used to photograph, Bruno SILVA tried to bring the pollution into the photograph itself through the pollution present in the water, sometimes resulting in strange solarizations due to the high levels of bleach present in the river.
“Pego Negro” is about the passage of time that is closely linked to photography: from erosion through pollution, through aging and how it all can affect and modify the landscape around us – the photographic medium itself and our visual perception.
Bruno Silva is a Portuguese photographer born in 1983. He uses photography as vehicle in projects in the area of documentary / personal. He exhibits regularly in Portugal since 2017 and won the scholarship for Emerging Documentary Photography by Manifesto (IPCI in Porto). In 2018, he won the grant of the festival Estação Imagem Coimbra and he was one of the winners of Urbanautica Institute Awards in 2020.
In Portugal he is represented by Adorna Gallery, Porto.
BRUNO SILVA & PEP
With his series "Coimbra - B", Bruno Silva participated in PEP's exhibition "Escape".
“Coimbra, October 12, 1938 - A street in Coimbra at two in the morning makes you shiver. We are not sure if we are alive or if we are dead. Everything is covered with such an air of unreality, that the houses, the sky, the trees and two figures that pass by in a corner look like things awake from a world that has already died.” - Miguel Torga, Diaries.
“Coimbra is the third largest city in Portugal, well known for its university founded in 1290. I lived in Coimbra from 2005 until the end of 2007. It was in Coimbra that I started to photograph and develop my film in the bathroom. “Coimbra - B” is the name of the train station that connects the north and south of the country. It is also a place of departures and returns that so well represents the city and my own memory.“
"Coimbra - B" by Bruno Silva, from the PEP exhibition "Escape"