Manuel Valente Alves - Porto Atlas – Um Livro de Fotografia (Ed. bilingue)

I love cities, particularly historic cities. And Porto, a city of medieval origin, is one of the ones that fascinate me the most. I visited it for the first time with my parents as a child. I continued to frequent it throughout my life, not only for leisure, as in the beginning, but also to be with the friends I made along the way, or to participate in cultural, scientific and other activities. In 2018, during one of my walks through the city, I took some street photos that I really liked.

The atmosphere was extraordinarily beautiful and luminous. And the idea came to me to make a photography book that would simultaneously show this feeling of mine and combine the photographic gaze with history and design, a tribute to this city that I love so much. I spoke with my friend Maria do Carmo Serén, a historian who was born and lives in Porto, and with my wife Nina Szielasko, a designer who was born and lived in Hamburg and who, since arriving in Portugal in 2001, has fallen in love with Porto, partly because the city reminds her, in some aspects, of her hometown. They both liked the idea and embraced the project.
We quickly started working and, after two years, here is the book, Porto Atlas: A Book of Photography. Nina accompanied me and collaborated in the selection of the images that make up this book, and Maria do Carmo wrote the introduction and the beautiful narrative essay. I am deeply grateful to both of them.