In a journey through the territory, photographing becomes an act of perception and identification of gestures and movements, of the morphology of places. Over five weeks of fieldwork, it is on the mountain that the narrative is built, that memories and contemporaneity are identified, the people: Lamas de Mouro and Castro Laboreiro.

This photographic project is intended as an interpretation about a community that is in constant movement, crossing borders, by migration or immigration, in the present or the past. Who decides to be here and/or to come back? It is in this emotional balance and permanent connection, even at a distance, that this territory can be defined.

As an author, the journey through these lands draws and imagines the idea of a narrative sequence, awakening to new ways of approaching, intervening and activating an object of thought. In this work there are parts of a whole, details of an intention towards who is being treated and portrayed. It was in the achievement of discourse and rapprochement that I began to understand what the project would become, a trace of the representativeness of those who live or return here. Following the preparation and production of the project, I find a dedicated, thoughtful and diverse social structure, over a period of time and a territory under construction.

Being part of a mountain with so many memories transforms contemporaneity into a gesture of constant representation. Daily life becomes a mirror, a reflection of what it would have been like to live here. There is a framed and decided past, but also the search for a future where memories can be maintained and where they survive. However, those who live here want to be part of today and remain. It is in the transformation, from day to day, that this mutation of the territory allows itself to a current design, a new organization of this community: wanting to stay, or to return, without losing what used to be like being, belonging, to that place.

Joao Gigante, 2021