DEVIATION OF THE SUN by António Júlio Duarte
Design André Príncipe & José Pedro Cortes
Softcover / 72 pages / color / 29.5 x 19 cm
Edition of 500
Centro Cultural Vila Flor, 2013
“It was 1997 and the new millennium was imminent, one could feel the tense anticipation about what was to come next.
I was alone in Japan, a place I had never been before.
During the day I would go out looking for my own sense of the place, photographing in a 6×6 format, exploring notions of center, a place of convergence, as the world expanded before me in its uncertain course. In the night, confined to unfamiliar rooms, I would look at myself, with only the alien sound and images from local TV as a companion, I was lost and felt a need to look at the simple things around me, objects, in an attempt to map a familiar reality, trying to hold on to the idea that things were still the same.
Deviation of the sun is a work about gravity, the ultimate force of placement. I decided to produce it as a book so as to free the images from the vertical decisiveness of the wall, giving the viewer the freedom to look at these images from any given angle and position, and most importantly, from familiar places of their own, at their own pace and rhythm. The viewer is thus in a position to explore the unfamiliarity of these images, and to question their placement, from a familiar vantage point.
Fifteen years later, I felt a need to go back to these images.
The millenium is long gone but the vertigo of uncertainty is yet to disappear.”
Lisboa, September 2013
– António Júlio Duarte
http://www.pierrevonkleist.com/deviation-of-the-sun.html