This is the 2019 edition of the NOVO BANCO Revelação award, the only sponsoring initiative to support young artistic production in Portugal devoted to the specific field of photography, resulting from a partnership with NOVO BANCO. The applications received this year were reviewed by an international jury made up of Susana Lourenço Marques (Professor of Photography and the History of Photography at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Porto University), the Ecuadorian Manuela Moscoso (appointed curator of the 2020 Liverpool Biennial) and the Spanish independent curator, Pedro de Lhano. In dialogue with Filipa Loureiro and Ricardo Nicolau — the two curators responsible for managing the logistics of the event and the presentation of the exhibition in Serralves —, the jury distinguished the projects proposed by Diogo da Cruz, Luís Ramos and winner Alice dos Reis, which were brought to fruition thanks to the NOVO BANCO production grant and can now be seen at Serralves.

The performative installation proposed by Diogo da Cruz investigates the status of photography and its legitimizing role in knowledge and events. Bringing art and science close together, the artist follows the work of a team of researchers who seek to capture the unknown through a powerful ‘camera lens’ installed in the centre of a mountain aimed to photograph black matter. Luís Ramos’ project, loaded with ironic references to the art world — such as a sculpture made of industrial objects that may be mistaken for a post-minimalist work —, discusses the heuristic potential of the different devices used to create photographic images, with particular attention to the mobile phone in which so many images are accidentally generated and immediately discarded. In the broader scope of her research on the relationship between species, miscegenation, hybridism and ocean ecology, Alice dos Reis submitted a sci-fi film conceived on the grounds of a photographic practice facilitating the horizontal axis of relationships and allowing humans to look ‘with animals instead of at animals’.

Besides producing the video she submitted to the jury, Alice dos Reis chose to be particularly involved in the monograph dedicated to the winner. As an outcome of this investment, one of the exhibition rooms was conceived as a reading room, where visitors can — before or after watching her video — get acquainted with the universes explored therein.