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PORTUGAL VISTO POR UM ESTRANGEIRO
It was a great pleasure for the General Consulate of Portugal in Maputo to host the exhibition “Portugal through a foreigner’s eyes”, of Michael Barrientos, a sample of 33 photos he shot during the period he lived in Portugal back to 2005.
For several reasons: first because Michael Barrientos has a great talent seen in all his (and are already so many) works – talent to seize people and atmospheres, atmospheres without people, icons and landscapes, as well as a talent to explore themes; then because he saw Portugal in its modernity with its history and traditions in background; finally, it is healthy and important to have others, besides ourselves, looking to us – they have the distance we lack and the spirit free of our limits.
The exhibition of Michael Barrientos integrates itself well with the spirit of “Interseccções”, the first exhibition hosted by the Consulate General of Portugal in Maputo. Then, we exhibited in the same space Mozambican painters and artists having lived or crossed other realities, and Portuguese artists and painters that crossed with Mozambique. With Michael Barrientos’s exhibiton we also crossed his universe with a reality (Portugal) different of the reality from where he came.
These intersections make all sense in the global world where we live today. And they add deepness, not the contrary, to the particular universes of each country and each people.
We must thank very much to Michael Barrientos for having accepted to share with the public, namely the Portuguese, these other dimensions that only enrich the way we see ourselves.
Graça Gonçalves Pereira
Consul-Geral de Portugal em Maputo
31-01-2010
Sobre O Exposição
About
Michael Barrientos is a documentary photographer based in Maputo, Mozambique. In 1993, he began his journalism career in Central California working as a news writer but switched to photography and has worked on newspaper staffs across the United States including the San Antonio Express-News, The Sarasota Herald-Tribune and most recently The New York Times. He was a stringer for the Associated Press covering the U.S./Mexico border in Texas and began his current freelance career in Portugal in 2005. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, USA Today, MSNBC and The Independent Magazine. His non-editorial clients range from corporate institutions such as Barclays and Osram to non-profit organizations such as The International Center for AIDS Care and Treatment Programs (ICAP), The HALO Trust and Iris Ministries Inc. Barrientos is a graduate of California State University-Fullerton and holds a Master's Program in documentary photography and photojournalism at London College of Communication.