This ongoing project results from artistic research developed on Farol Island, in Ria Formosa, Faro. This island is an immensely popular tourist destination in the south of Portugal and every year it hosts thousands of tourists. Despite that, the island has almost no inhabitants.

My father and his father have been going there on vacation since 1973. Every year since I was born, almost without exception, I went there with my family and, in 2019, I started taking my camera. As I started photographing, I realised the images I was making were mostly landscape images that felt very intimate. Because I had gone there so many times, I felt at home there. In contrast, the people in the images felt very distant, and unapproachable. These images exist in the awkward tension between this familiar landscape and the strangers that inhabit it.

At night I walk along the pier protected by a veil of darkness. And on these walks, I encounter faint silhouettes of men. Some are fishing, others walking too. At that moment tourists and locals fade away. We are shadows, equally unrecognisable.

As it stands, this project is ongoing, and this page displays my attempts to explore these awkward tensions and intimate feelings.