João Pina draws upon his family history to tell the story of the Portuguese concentration campat Tarrafal, Cape Verde which operated between 1936 and 1974. The visual history of the campis told through the only known photographs taken inside the Tarrafal camp, combined withcorrespondence, archives, objects and Pinas own contemporary photographs. Collectivelythese materials create a new dialogue about the Portuguese fascist regime of the pastand theresistance to iton the 50th anniversary of its demise.In 1949, Pinas grandfather Guilherme da Costa Carvalhoa young communist militant was sentto the camp. Later that year Guilhermes parents were granted unprecedented permission to visittheir son and using a Rolleiflex camera they photographed all the living prisoners and the graves ofthe ones who had died in the camp. This extensive visual recordthe only one ever made inside theconcentration campwas created with the intent of reporting back to the families of the otherprisoners held in the camp or had died there.Seventy years later, in 2019, Pina began investigating a box in his family archive containing thenegatives, contact sheets, vintage prints of these pictures made inside the camp, along with relatedletters and telegrams sent from his grandfather.
