Home Less

It took four years to photographer Nelson Garrido to develop his project Home Less, now on show at the Architecture Biennale in Venice, within the exhibition “Time – Space – Existence” until the 27th of November 2016.

Home Less explores spaces and residential projects that were left abandoned when the several financial crises hit Portugal. Going beyond the revelation of ruins, it provides an authentic experience of places. With the beginning of the real estate crises, the construction of new houses almost stopped or were left unfinished. Many others, even when completed, were never occupied nor sold. In the buildings shown there’s a light that reminds us the difference between what reality is and what it should be, and that is no more than a metaphor of interruption. The human element is present in the simulacrum, in the light that is life and, at the same time, paradoxically, that inhabits the unoccupied.

Nelson Garrido was born in Portugal in 1974 and teaches architectural photography in the Instituto Portugues de Fotografia, in Porto. Since 2002, he develops personal projects that explore the urban and architectural influences on the city landscapes. In 2006 he distinguished in the Euro Press Photo Awards organized by Fuji Film, winning the architectural section. He has taken part in several personal and collective exhibitions showing works like From the desert to the underground, showing illegal immigration from Mauritania to Europe at the Palácio das Artes, in Oporto.