Paulo Nozolino

Paulo Nozolino is one of the central figures of contemporary photography. His journey begins in the 70's in London where he went to live. Then Paris, from the late 80s and throughout the 90s, was his basis for a long series of travels across the Arab World, as well as Europe, after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Books like Penumbra and Solo are good examples of his political concerns with a changing society. He returned to Portugal in 2002, after an anthological exhibition – Nada – at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris. In 2005, Museu de Serralves, in Porto, invited him to a new anthological– Far Cry – first time ever to show work by a Portuguese photographer.

A frontal artist, Nozolino sees photography the same way he sees life, using it to understand both the world and himself and taking it to the limits of his quest, his answers and his experiences. There is no room for complacency in his work. Destruction means destruction, death means death. Constant cycles in his historical time ‘par excellence’, the Twentieth Century, and even more alive in the present moment, as is stated in his most recent works, bone lonely, Makulatur, Usura and Loaded Shine.

Public recognition accompanies the artist's work from the beginning. Awards such as the Villa Médicis (1994), in France, or the Grande Prémio Nacional de Fotografia (2006) and the Prémio Sociedade Portuguesa de Autores (2013), in Portugal, are reflections of such notoriety.

Submitted by Quadrado Azul