Photographic Mapping of the Territory

Abstract

Photographic Mapping of the Territory and the Archive as a Creative Process

– Pedro Guilherme e Sofia Salema

Developed in close collaboration with the CA²RE community (Community for Artistic and Architectural Research) and the University of Évora's CHAIA and IN2PAST groups, this initiative proposes expanding the concept of mapping to encompass both creative and critical acts.

Through a combination of a collective workshop and an ongoing exhibition, the project opens up a space for reflection on mapping as not only a tool for representation, but as a method and process — interpretative, performative and situated.

Distancing itself from conventional approaches to landscape and architectural photography, the project draws on Duarte Belo's extensive photographic archive, which has been developed since the late 1980s, to explore the methodological, symbolic, and territorial dimensions of mapping. A curated selection of photographs, texts, maps and visual artefacts will be presented not as static objects, but as forms of territorial interpretation — revealing the evolving connections between landscapes, architecture, and ecological and cultural memory.

At the heart of the event lies the notion of the archive as a living, generative entity — one that is dynamic, relational, and capable of producing knowledge. This perspective forms part of an expanded definition of mapping as an open and critical process: it offers a means of making spatial realities visible and facilitating their reinterpretation and interrogation. The archive thus becomes a place of activation — connecting the past and the present, images and words, experiences and projects.

The exhibition is the result of a collaborative process with the participating doctoral students. In a workshop format, it gives rise to a temporary collective exhibition developed in situ and open to the public. In this context, participants were invited to explore questions such as:

• In what ways can mapping practices reveal invisible or marginalized narratives?

• How can photography function not only as documentation, but as a construction of meaning?

• What new geographies emerge when mapping is approached as a critical, creative, and situated practice?

By engaging with the expanded field of mapping — which combines artistic methodologies, performative cartographies and ecological-cultural awareness — this workshop sits at the intersection of project-based research and territorial narrative. It therefore supports the wider goals of the PhD programmes in Architecture and Landscape at the University of Évora and the CA²RE community by promoting inclusive, transdisciplinary approaches guided by project-based research.