Virgilio Ferreira

Virgilio Ferreira’s images are produced in three sizes as archival inkjet prints. All prints are mounted to Sintra and front mounted to acrylic.

Daily Pilgrims

One of the great dichotomies of the modern age is that as the world’s major cities teem with life, activity and excitement, so much more likely are its inhabitants to feel an unprecedented solitude. Virgilio Ferreira has made a study of this phenomenon in his most recent photographic essay, Daily Pilgrims. Wandering foreign cities and embracing his outsider status, Ferreira trains his camera on the over-looked, the anonymous and their suggestions.

Ferreira looks to bourgeoning Asian cities such as Bangkok, Macau and Shanghai — places where entrenched cultural ideology and tradition is in constant, even fervent, juxtaposition with contemporary urban territory and behavior. As Ferreira puts it, “Cities seem to mirror our state of mind and reveal secrets that can be decoded when minute detail are looked at: it is between the lines that I seek ambiguities and contradictions.”

From a well-lit street skyline put into perspective by a wall of tiny, blurred daisies, to the young, obscured urbanite flashing a smirk and brandishing tattooed arms; Ferreira proves himself well-versed in culture and counter-culture and their inevitable clashing. Ferreira’s photographs are emotional atmospheres that blithely comment on a fleeting and amorphous city. Selective focus, liquid color and the linear progression from one plane to another create a sense of helplessness for the players in these dramas. Yet there seems no other place that Ferreira, his subjects or his urbanscapes would rather be.