Tarrafal

The visual history of the camp is told through the only known photographs taken inside the Tarrafal camp, combined with correspondence, archives, objects and Pinas own contemporary photographs. Collectively these materials create a new dialogue about the Portuguese fascist regime of the pastand the resistance to iton the 50th anniversary of its demise. In 1949, Pinas grandfather Guilherme da Costa Carvalhoa young communist militant was sent to the camp. Later that year Guilhermes parents were granted unprecedented permission to visit their son and using a Rolleiflex camera they photographed all the living prisoners and the graves of the ones who had died in the camp. This extensive visual recordthe only one ever made inside the concentration campwas created with the intent of reporting back to the families of the other prisoners held in the camp or had died there. Seventy years later, in 2019, Pina began investigating a box in his family archive containing the negatives, contact sheets, vintage prints of these pictures made inside the camp, along with related letters and telegrams sent from his grandfather.