José Maçãs de Carvalho (Anadia, 1960) lives and works in Coimbra, where he obtained a first degree in Modern Languages and Literature, in 1984, at the Coimbra University. At the end of the 1990’s, he also studied Art Management in Macau, at the European Studies Institute, and obtained a PHD in Contemporary Art, in 2014, at Colégio das Artes of the Coimbra University, where he teaches at the Department of Architecture and Colégio das Artes. Throughout the years, he received several scholarships – from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, in 1994; from Fundação Oriente, between 1999 and 2007; from the Camões Institute, in 2001 and 2007; from Centro Português de Fotografia, in 2003; from Instituto das Artes/Dgartes, between 2006 and 2008. In the field of curatorship, the project Topografias da Vinha e do Vinho should be mentioned (Cordoaria Nacional, 2002; Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, 2003), the temporary and permanent exhibitions at Museu do Vinho da Bairrada (2003), and the exhibition My Own Private Pictures, at Plataforma Revólver (2005). He has a regular presence in various Encontros de Fotografia de Coimbra, since 1988, and he has been showing solo since the beginning of the 1990’s. In 2011, given the extensive photographic repertoire that he had been creating since 1988, he decided to initiate an archive project. Therefore, he oriented all his artistic production to this project, structuring his work around the concept “Archive” and “Memory”, which also became the key matter for his doctoral work. Within this theme, he did various solo exhibitions between 2011 and 2017, at CAV (Coimbra), at Ateliers Concorde (Lisboa and Colégio das Artes, Coimbra), at the VPF Gallery, at the City Hall Photographic Archive, at MNAC and at MAAT, publishing, in 2014, Unpacking: a desire for the archive; in 2016, Archive and Apparatus; and in 2017, Archive and Interval. He showed his film production in 2011, at the Stenersen Museum, in Oslo, in 2013, at Union Square Park, in New York, and at Theatre de la Ville, in Paris. He was nominated for the 2005 BESPhoto Prize (CCB), in 2006, and for the short list of the Pictet Prix Photographic Award (Switzerland), in 2008. His work is represented at the Círculo de Artes Plásticas de Coimbra, at the EDP Foundation, at the BES Art Collection, MNAC, among others.
FMV, October 2020
