Gomma Photography Grant 2018
How to disappear completely
Photographer
Fatima Abreu Ferreira
How to disappear completely
02 Feb, 2022
How to disappear completely is a work of struggle, obsession and complete hallucination. When I turned 33y I decided to abandon the life I had and returned to my childhood hometown to study photography. Six months after I realized that I knew who I had stopped being but had no idea who I´d become. Only the camera could proof to me that I existed. That I was not a hallucination. Through it, I´ve photographed every aspect of my life through these two past years: from my family and friends to the memories lost in old family photographs, hoping that the people and the surroundings where I grew could help me find myself. But, in true honesty, I have no idea of what I am doing. Everything seems nightmarish, a dream within a dream. My family changed, my friends grew into new families, my hometown morphed into a senseless touristic destination. I feel displaced. A strange body on a foreign dimension, trying to find myself and the person I used to be.
About the photographer
Fatima Abreu Ferreira
Fatima Abreu Ferreira is a Portuguesephotographer, born in Guarda, in 1983. In 1988 she moved to the north of the country and became a psychologist. In 2016Fatima abandoned psychologyto work and study photography.Fatima is mainly a self-taught photographer but has always developed training and workshops with her main influences such as Anders Petersenand Jacob Aue Sobol. In 2018 she completed theArtistic Photography Master at IPCI and started an independent publishing house called Red String.She has multiple publications and has exhibited nationally and internationally.Fatima's body of work has a strong humanistic view as a way of approaching life in both public and private contexts and her aesthetics is predominantly black and white with a dark and grainy style providing an intense, visceral and dramatic view of the subject.
