Issue 3: Traces in the Veil

Capturing the Echoes of a Fading Life and Timeless Childhood Shores

Jorge Silva
May 27, 2025

GALERIA LOCAL

Welcome and thank you for reading

Dear Reader,

Thank you for joining us for the third issue of Galeria Local, where we trace memory through a veil of presence, seeking the personal—and perhaps the universal.

We open with a poetic elegy to Gramps Alexandre, whose life unfolds across two spaces: the house he left behind, and the nursing home where I captured a fleeting moment of his final days. These images—and the words that accompany them—offer a meditation on stillness, continuity, and the quiet weight of objects that outlive us.

In Narrative Layers, we present one of the lost pictures from the early wanderings of Visita Guiada: a photograph taken in Oeiras, where childhood memory and adult observation fold into a suspended frame of mist and time.

Looking ahead, we invite you to help shape our next long-form interview with the photographer Davide Degano, whose work explores identity, belonging, and memory. You’ll find details on how to submit your questions below.

Thank you for walking with us—between rooms, across mist, and through the images that remain.

Warmly,
Jorge

Poem

Gramps Alexandre: Elegy in Stillness

Epigraph:
“In death, boils the wine, and the promise dyes the eyelids with an image”
—Herberto Hélder, Love in Visit

A house, a cellar—
their walls bear the weight of vanished kin,
photographs like faded saints,
talismans glowing with muted prayer.

Work, wine, faith—
a trinity broken.
Gramps Alexandre fades.

He bore tales, and unseen horizons—
a cosmopolitan spirit,
trapped in a rural, heavy, poor cage,
where fields whispered limits he could not cross.

That day, I found him in the nursing home—
breath a thread,
hands a map of labor, reaching for light.

Then, his house stood as a reliquary—
untouched,
each object poised,
as if he lingered still.

No dust, no void—
only a stillness that holds its breath.

These photographs unfold that day:
two realms, one soul—
the nursing home’s pale glow,
the house’s shadowed warmth.

Memory lingers in the pause between walls,
a quiet hymn in light and frame.

“What would our spirits be
if they did not have the bread of earthly objects to feed them,
the wine of the beauties created to inebriate them…?”
—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Not a lament,
but a tracing of light—
a man’s essence,
woven through rooms,
through images,
through echoes that refuse to fade.

Narrative Layers

In this issue’s Narrative Layers, we explore ‘Lost Pictures’—images born from Visita Guiada’s early journeys to my childhood and adolescence haunts. Excluded from the final book, these photographs linger as fragments of place and absence. Captured in black and white to distill their essence, they invite you to see beyond the edit.

LOST IN MIST: OEIRAS

This photograph emerged in Oeiras during Visita Guiada’s early wanderings. I returned to this beach, drawn by a childhood echo—my mother’s tale of my one-year-old fear, trembling at the waves’ roar, and our Sunday visits at four and five, when joy danced on softening sand. Now rocks dominate, a quiet change I came to witness. The mist, the flat sea, and two fishermen—mere gestures against the horizon—caught my lens, unplanned yet alive. This image didn’t fit the book’s narrative, a lost piece of compressed time—my one-year-old fear, five-year-old joy, and today’s gaze—suspending it in a quiet frame, offering no answers, only presence.

Join Us for the Finissage – June 8

As Visita Guiada closes its cycle, we invite you to a final encounter with the work, in the space where memory, light, and silence have been held these past months. Attendance is free, but space is limited.

Let us know if you’re coming—and feel free to bring someone you love.

Coming Next:

Interview with Davide Degano

The next long-form conversation at Galeria Local features Davide Degano, whose work explores identity, belonging, and collective memory through deeply researched visual narratives.

Originally scheduled for today evening, the interview has been rescheduled due to health concerns, ensuring you still have the opportunity to contribute. Set for publication in Issue #4, on 3 June, this discussion will dive into Davide’s approach to capturing personal and cultural stories through photography, touching on the layers of forgotten histories, the sense of belonging in place, and the enduring power of images to preserve memory. As a reader, you’re invited to shape this conversation!

What would you like to ask Davide?
Send your question by 27 May at 4pm (WEST), and I’ll bring a selection into the conversation. Don’t miss your chance to influence Davide’s reflections—send your questions today and be part of Issue #4!

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

Martin Parr

Until next time,