José Alves

“The identity of places is very much bound up with the histories which are told of them, how those histories are told, and which history turns out to be dominant.”

(Doreen Massey, Places and Their Pasts, 1995)

The identity of local cultures, and places themselves, are very much connected with imaginaries, place-myths, narratives and names. Whether they are based on facts or pure fiction. In some cases, a clear distinction between stories and history becomes difficult to discern or even unnecessary. As it happens with the concepts of truth and post-truth, myths and historical facts become subject to multiple and fluid interpretations moulding an ever more changing human action and behaviour. This project delves into the shared interplay between past, present, History, story-telling, territory and psycho-geography.

For centuries the concept of finisterre didn’t refer to a specific place, but to a border between the known world, the “inhabited”, the ecumene in Greek – and the unknown. It was believed to be the tipping point, a portal between worlds, a place of dualities. Fear and admiration. Life and death. Ends and beginnings. A door to the divine realm.

The name Finisterre (in Spanish), or Fisterra (in Galician), comes from the Latin finis terrae which stands for “end of the earth”. It names a rockbound cape facing the vast tenebrous Atlantic Ocean, in the region of Galicia (Spain).

A narrative that largely contributes to the imaginary associated with Fisterra refers to the sharp drop from the mountainous region to the Atlantic Ocean, dominated by sudden steep cliffs. Along with the weather and the rough shorelines, the large number of shipwrecks throughout the years and thousands of lives lost in the area, granted it the name of “Costa da Morte”, Coast of Death.

Over the years, Finisterre has also been established as the finishing point of the Way of Saint-James, one of the most famous pilgrimage routes in the world, or even a more remote pre-historical path of initiation and enlightenment followed by generations, the Janus Path. Regardless of the multiple interpretations and misinterpretations of historical facts, to this day a growing number of pilgrims from around the world follow a myth and, through the same paths of our ancestors, embark on an expedition in search of a personal, or broader, truth. For me, it has been a place of contemplation and the arriving place of my personal journeys. And it is fitting that now it became the starting point for this project.

José Alves is an emerging photographic artist who specialises in long-term documentary and personal projects, mainly focusing his work on the issues of territory, memory and personal and collective identity. Born 1989, in Braga, Portugal, he has presented his work both in solo and group exhibitions in his home country and abroad. He studied human sciences and photography and graduated with a master´s degree in Documentary and Artistic Photography in 2018. He’s  currently based in Braga.