Issue 19: The Ethics of Attention

Pascal’s hook, Arcadia’s unsettled gardens, and the frame that shows how we see

Author

Jorge Silva
September 17, 2025

GALERIA LOCAL

Welcome — and thank you for reading.

This issue braids three threads around a single concern: how to look without turning what we see into a lure.

We open with Pascal, Misery, and the Hook—a short meditation on suffering as spectacle. From the Church’s theater of repentance to photography’s truth-claims, I ask what happens when misery is used to arrest attention, and what it would mean to reveal without exploiting—images as thresholds, not bait.

In Narrative Layers — Arcadia, I gather the arc from Issues 6–8 into one place: the myth recast in the city garden; the edge where geometry meets growth; the frame that shapes meaning (what we include/exclude); the garden as a mirror of inner landscapes; and the move toward an itinerant platform of modular shows and community workshops. It’s the map so far, ahead of the exhibition.

Alongside, our collaboration with Them Frames continues with The Frame as a Parallel to Perception: framing not as mere technique, but as a way attention becomes visible—how photographs show not just what we see, but how we see.

Arcadia—the exhibition opens 28 September 2025, 5 pm, at Galeria Local. Photographed over six years, it invites you to meet gardens not as retreats but as living territories shaped by structure and resistance.

I would love to see you there.

Jorge

Pascal, Misery, and the Hook

If Pascal saw misery as the defining condition of humanity, modern culture has often turned that recognition into spectacle. The Church once framed suffering as proof of our fallen nature and a way to draw souls into obedience; in art, and later in photography, misery became a hook. It arrests attention, demands witness, and compels belief. To show suffering is to borrow its gravity.

But there is danger in this borrowing. Misery, when used as lure, risks becoming ornament — a currency for pity, shock, or moral capital. The Church knew this mechanism well: confront the believer with their weakness, then offer redemption as the only cure. Photography, too, has sometimes repeated this structure, staging the misery of others as revelation for the viewer. What appears as truth-telling can slip easily into manipulation.

And yet, misery is not an illusion. It exists, raw and unmediated, in the lives we touch and in our own. To refuse it is not resistance but blindness. The task is to face it without turning it into bait. In this sense, photography carries a double responsibility: to reveal without exploiting, to acknowledge suffering without reducing it to a pretext. The frame must open toward thought, not simply arrest the eye.

Pascal urged us not to flee misery, but to contemplate it. Photography can echo that demand. Its images, when honest, are not distractions but thresholds — moments where misery and attention meet, where pain is neither denied nor glamorized but held, however briefly, in the stillness of form.

Narrative Layers

Since Issue 6 I’ve been tracing Arcadia through Lisbon’s gardens—where geometry meets growth, order tests wildness, and looking becomes a way of thinking. What follows gathers the thread so far—myth recast, the garden’s edge, frame within a frame, inner landscapes, and the move toward an itinerant platform—so the whole arc sits in one place before we open the exhibition on 28 September. If you’re new, this is your map; if you’ve been following, it’s the through-line.

ARCADIA - Echoes of a Myth

Rooted in the ancient ideal of a natural refuge where order and freedom meet, Arcadia returns in the contemporary city as garden. The serenity is surface. Underneath, competing forces shape it: discipline / spontaneity, geometry / wildness, intention / resistance. The myth persists as longing—and as the quiet admission that perfection eludes us.

The garden’s edge

That tension lands at the border. Urban gardens carved from concrete are living paradoxes: we tame, and nature answers back. Designs impose discipline; growth resists and weaves itself through the plan. Unless structure hardens to the point of lifelessness, the organic keeps reclaiming space—something you feel across Lisbon’s changing sitesgardens are more than physical spaces — they mirror our inner landscapes.”

Frame within a frame

A garden frames nature in the city; a photograph sets the bounds of our seeing. Each edge is a choice—what to include, what to leave out—so meaning emerges from relation.

“The garden is a frame within the city, just as photography is a frame within our perception.”

Inner landscapes

These places are not preserved Edens. They hold fleeting equilibria and disruption at once—traces of order beside fragments of resistance. Arcadia asks for a doubled gaze: outward, to the city’s quiet negotiations with nature; inward, to the ways we soften, shape, or silence what resists containment. Urban gardens are more than physical spaces—they mirror our inner landscapes.

Toward an Itinerant Arcadia

From project to platform: modular, reusable structures adaptable to indoor or outdoor sites; each location reshapes the narrative and invites dialogue. Workshops (five weeks) gather a local archive and fold community back into the work. Rather than a finished object, it grows as a conversation in motion—a constellation that could reach up to nine editions a year. The exhibition opens on 28 September; the rest unfolds beyond the gallery’s walls.

‘‘Urban gardens are more than physical spaces—they mirror our inner landscapes.’’

From Vision to Perception

A few weeks ago, I announced my partnership with Them Frames by sharing the first part of a five-article series titled Crafting Your Photographic Voice. That piece introduced the idea that vision is not just personal style—it’s a framework for translating perception into photographic language.

This week, the series continues with The Frame as a Parallel to Perception—an exploration of how framing is not merely a technical decision, but a reflection of how we synthesize the world. Drawing on examples from William Eggleston and Roland Barthes, I suggest that photography materializes attention—and by doing so, it helps us understand not just what we see, but how we see.

Here’s a short excerpt:

“Photography makes this invisible frame visible, turning limitation into a conscious act of creation. The camera highlights the edges of our awareness, revealing what we might overlook or ignore.”

You can read the full piece on Them Frames here.

And if you're joining Galeria Local from Them Frames, welcome once again. I hope you'll enjoy what’s unfolding.

Coming Next:

Arcadia

On 28 September 2025, 5 pm, Galeria Local will open Arcadia, my most extensive project to date. Photographed over six years across Lisbon’s gardens and peripheral green spaces, the work explores how human design and natural persistence intertwine — sometimes in harmony, often in tension.

The exhibition invites viewers to see gardens not as static retreats, but as living territories shaped by both structure and resistance.

As a small gesture, everyone attending the opening will receive a 10×15 cm print from the project.s shaped by both structure and resistance. More details will follow in the coming weeks.

“The ordinary is a very under-exploited aspect of our lives because it is so familiar.”

Martin Parr

Until next time,

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