The Memory of Stones

This documentary project explores the Portuguese coast through black and white photography, focusing on its rock formations and on the way the sea interacts with them over time. The rocks appear as ancient bodies, marked by fractures, veins and inclinations that reveal a history written long before human presence. The sea, constant and untamed, does not dominate them — it enters into dialogue with them, slowly shaping the landscape.

The absence of colour reduces the image to its essence: light, shadow, texture and form. The rocky surfaces become almost abstract, evoking primitive maps or territories yet to be deciphered. The sea emerges as a continuous force, at times violent, at times silent, always larger than any human scale.

Within this coastline lies a subtle connection to the spirit of the Portuguese Age of Discoveries — not as a historical narrative, but as a state of mind. The unease of facing the horizon, the impulse to move forward without certainty, guided by observation and intuition. Like the navigators who once set sail into the unknown, this work is born from the confrontation with something greater, timeless and uncontrollable.

More than a record of place, this project is a reflection on time, permanence and transformation. Costa Vicentina reveals itself as a space where stone holds memory and the sea continuously rewrites it. To photograph here is to accept slowness, repetition and humility — and to recognise that true discovery begins when we learn how to see.