1.1.1. Life Stories

From an epistemological point of view, it is in the area of life stories that the object of study for historians, sociologists and anthropologists is revealed. Faced with the past or the present, they try to study a society or a culture as comprehensively and objectively as possible.

As far as this project is concerned, this analytical plan can be viewed in two ways. Firstly, it refers to the lives of the ex-railway workers, their families, their careers at CP, their values, among other aspects, which, in some ways, were reported in the “In My Time...” initiative. This is the dimension that most interests a historian or anthropologist/sociologist looking to reconstruct personal and corporate identities and cultures. The second way of looking at this plan for analysing life stories does not focus on the study of retired CP railway workers, but on the context and circumstances underlying both the “In My Time...” initiatives and the creation of a project that included the production of a photography exhibition and the publication of a photobook.

The “stories” no longer focus on the professional lives of the ex-railway workers, but on those of the photographer, in relation to my decisions, production standards, aesthetic influences, editorials, and so on. Which relationships were established between myself and the museum in terms of expectations and requirements (not least because this project received support for mounting the exhibition and publishing the book)? Why did I opt for this type of portrait, so centred on medium shots and a frontal pose? What is the reason behind the layout, the short story text genre, the selection of the exhibition venue and the exhibition period? Why was the photographic record so studio-based? Was this the most appropriate way to satisfy the expectations and objectives of the parties involved in the project (the museum, myself and the railway workers photographed and interviewed)? This entire issue would require an analytical detour, through discovering other lives and other stories - those of the protagonists behind the mounting of an exhibition and a book - but which are not now within the scope of this essay.

Whether from a point of view centred on the ex-railway workers or on the subjects who produced the communication “artefacts”, this is where the world of life is inscribed - constantly changing, multidimensional - the fragment of which - in space and time - the photographic image records, becoming (from a semiotic point of view) its documentary trace. It is these fragments that make up the photographs: moments fixed on a surface that is more or less sensitive to light, referring to a space and time of action (the geographical space and the historical moment of the recording), but also spatialised and timed based on a mechanical representation device, a frame and a shutter “speed”.

I will thus focus on some of the specific contextual aspects of producing this project. As I mentioned, the subject of the project was the representation of retired CP railway workers in studio portrait photographs (Figure 1, Figure 2, Figure 3 and Figure 4), exhibited and published in a photobook.

Credits. Eduardo J. M. Camilo

Figure 1 Manuel Cabrita dos Santos 

Credits. Eduardo J. M. Camilo

Figure 2 Jaime de Jesus Santos David 

Credits. Eduardo J. M. Camilo

Figure 3 Jacinto Santana Pereira 

Credits. Eduardo J. M. Camilo

Figure 4 Rafael Rebola Rodrigues 

The expectations were essentially of a communicational nature: I wanted to produce images and write meaningful life stories, testimonies that would evoke a professional career, and even a certain level of subjectivity. On the other hand, the museum’s main concern was the need to faithfully record the testimonies created through the “In My Time...” initiatives. In terms of relations with ex-railway workers, there were other expectations, especially with regard to how they wished to be “well portrayed”. Sometimes it was necessary to explain that what was being photographically staged or reported established a figurative (connotative) relationship consisting of evocation, requiring a reading and gaze that could be neither literal nor direct. I will return to this when I reflect on the veridiction modalities and the veridiction contract that guided this project.

It is understandable that the disparities existent in the conceptions of producing a portrait - those of the photographer and the photographed - are the result of a somewhat assumed recognition of the potential of photography in the construction of an ethos. This is a peculiarity that is not new. It already existed in the early days of photography, and was felt and managed by studio portrait photographers such as Félix Nadar (1820-1910) or André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri (1819-1890), when managing/staging the poses and circumspect physiognomies of the bourgeois in portraits as significant resources evocative of integrity and honour. In this respect, I cannot deny that the collection of portraits produced is characterised by a certain composition, requiring the mobilisation of certain objects and uniforms, even a pet (a cat), and the recurring staging of a 3/4 pose (neither fully frontal nor in profile). They are significant resources serving the same evocative purpose as the props of those old photographic studios. The difference lies in the intentionality behind all these expressive recurrences: the evocation of an identity, of an ethos that is not only subjective (as was the case with the bourgeois portrait or the carte-de-visite of the bonhomme portrait), but which is primarily intended to be corporate: women and men whose identities were forged on the railway and at CP.

I would emphasise that this evocation of a corporate ethos did not stem exclusively from the photographic record. It should be recalled that the project is syncretic

- nourished by both images and words. It was an exhibition and a photobook. Therefore, the evocations I wanted to elicit also resulted from a complementary relationship between images and words, which was evident from the way the book was laid out. On one sheet, odd-numbered pages, there was the photograph, and on the other, the text along with its heading. The images play out a fundamental meaning in the text or heading, sometimes illustrating it (“The Tickets Are Cardboard and Paper” - Rafael Rebola Rodrigues; Figure 4), at other times subtly evoking it by metonymy (“Do You Know What Drives a Train?” - Henri Alcaçorenho da Silva; Figure 5) or by metaphor (“Story of a ‘Cat’ and Her Flag” - Madalena Nobre Rodrigues João; Figure 6). Sometimes the opposite happens: it is the text that imposes meaning on the image (“Memories of a Boy Who Was Easter Lamb” - José António Galhofas Carvoeira; Figure 7).

Credits. Eduardo J. M. Camilo

Figure 5 Henrique Alcaçorenho da Silva 

Credits. Eduardo J. M. Camilo

Figure 6 Madalena Nobre Rodrigues João 

Credits. Eduardo J. M. Camilo

Figure 7 José António Galhofas Carvoeira 

I have already mentioned that this photographic and editorial project complemented the museum’s “In My Time...” initiatives. I was present during the visits when the testimonies were taken, trying to record key ideas. I sometimes also found myself having to carry out additional interviews. The aim was to write short texts - in the form of short narratives, chronicles with a beginning, middle and end (in the form of a denouement) - that evoked the careers or exemplary aspects of these individuals’ professional lives. In short, as part of a project where the image played an important role, the word, especially the spoken and heard word, was indispensable. It was by reference to the words that the portraits were produced, but these also induced a reading so that they could be interpreted. Without this symbiotic relationship, the photographs risked being seen as representations of an anthropometric presence, like those of My Portman on the Uchick tribe (1890; ^{Andrade, 2002}, pp. 56-57) or as an “exotic curiosity”. With the combination of text, the aim was for them to be able to evoke a (corporate) identity rather than signify an identification. This is why it is argued that this work is in line with the portraits developed by Edward Curtis (Figure 8), setting out “the history of all the Indian tribes, their life, their ceremonies, their legends and myths” (^{Adam, 2001/2008}, p. 32). Like this artistic photographer, I have adopted the role played by the staging, the (ostensibly studio) composition, the choice of props (but also the role played by words in evoking this corporate identity), regardless of recognising the disparity of the contexts, objectives and natures underlying these projects.

Credits. Edward Curtis, 1908

Figure 8 Edward Curtis: portraits of a Native American 

In short, I did not want to view these images as mere records - which, from a scientific point of view, are always difficult to utilise due to the continuous specificity of any image and the subjectivism of interpretation. On this subject, see Gregory ^{Bateson and Margaret Mead’s (1942}) position on the potential of using photography to understand the culture and character of the Balinese: it is an excellent way of recording and understanding (for example, see the work of Fabiana Domingues ^{Sanches, 2017}), but which contrasts with the difficulties of interpretation and the lack of methodologies for iconographic analysis. Instead, I preferred to look at them in a similar way to visual anthropology, where photography - in this case complemented by text - refers to abstract and formal content, related to ideology, culture, social organisation and politics (^{Sanches, 2017}, p. 73), which, from a semiotic point of view, will always need to call on a connotative analysis. In the case of my project, photographs are understood as evocative signifiers of corporate life stories; as signifiers that establish a complementary relationship with the spoken and written words of the interviewees, in a personal process of discovery. I recognise the seminal nature of these considerations, which require further study in the field of visual anthropology and photography, which will have to be undertaken in future reflections. I must remind the reader, however, that the epistemological background used for this reflection comes mainly from the more classical literature of semiology and semiotics - Charles Peirce, Roland Barthes, Georges Péninou, Jean-Marie Floch, Martine Joly, Philippe Dubois and, necessarily so, Algirdas Greimas - from whom I have taken my position on this issue.

1.1.2. The Lives of History

In the study of photography as a source of information, as a document - and there is no doubt about the status of photography as a document (^{Kossoy, 2012}) - there are considerations to be formulated which arise from certain aspects of its semiotic specificity, that is, its status as a sign. Such formulation is significant because in the material aspects of photography as a sign, sometimes certain aspects intersect, giving rise to disparate forms of interpretation. These were also present in this project. I will now categorise them based on a number of considerations.

First consideration: what is in the photograph. In relation to the “life story”, from a semiotic point of view, photography is just an index of a moment, a “proof of contact”, a very interesting term that belongs to the lexicon of photographic praxis. This particular aspect meant that what was previously written about stories with life was reduced to a product involving a choice to select certain facts as part of a book and an exhibition, sponsored by the A Estação (The Station) museum in 2022, in a specific space where the portraits were taken (my photographic studio, located in the city of Barreiro) related to a cast (the participants, whose identity is easily recognisable in the photobook entries and in the exhibition captions). In terms of the photographic production itself, this choice can be stated even more precisely: what was framed in terms of the shot? How was it framed in terms of shutter speed (exposure time)? And here alone, I could go on forever laying bare increasingly varied aspects. It is as if in the project, and especially in the photographic record, choices took the form of cuts, spatial and temporal segmentations of these life stories, so that the part (the indicative record of these cuts) is not to be confused with the whole (the globality of the historical context to which the project refers). Any “historical moment” is inevitably transformed into a “symbolic moment”, at the same time as the world (of “life stories”) is transformed into a world of representation and meaning (of “lives of history”). Because it is indicative, from the perspective of its testimony to the fissure of a space and a time, photography is the mark of the emergence of a document. But it is also the mark of a choice - intentional or involuntary, conscious, or not - to have done so at that moment, in that place and to have chosen to emphasise certain moments and aspects over others.

And what is in these photos? The visual record of various instances of someone, who is identified and known on the basis of an account and verbal identification (name, date of birth, professional position). The historian can explore some interesting material in this corpus for their study of the world of railways, especially with regard to working props such as lanterns, flags, tickets, uniforms, pickaxes, train manuals, route sheets and uniform guidelines. The photograph (complemented by some kind of text) is the recording of data testimony, a field tool, an observation instrument. In addition, what is in the photographs are meanings indicating my decisions as a photographer, testimonies about the choices of assuming a viewpoint embodied in a frame (mainly medium shots), an angle (frontal, neither low nor high angle), a pose (mainly 3/4, sometimes frontal against a neutral backdrop characterised by a burgundy backcloth), the choice of a certain shutter speed (1/125), aperture (mainly f:8) and sensor sensitivity (ISO 100); in valuing a certain type of photography (exclusively digital and in colour), in managing the lighting (soft, using an octagonal softbox, sometimes with a kicker light at a contrast ratio of 2:1) and in minimal post-editing in Lightroom and Photoshop to standardise exposure and colour temperature. In short, these decisions reflect a personal style and an “ideological” vision of the subject, namely that of wanting to produce a standardised “collection of images” from which the prop or the pose of the photographed individual were the main elements signifying a personal and, above all, corporate identity (that of former CP railway workers). See, for example, Figure 1, Figure 2, Figure 3, Figure 4, Figure 6 and Figure 7, presented above, and Figure 9 and Figure 10.

Credits. Eduardo J. M. Camilo

Figure 9 Artur Dias Henriques 

Credits. Eduardo J. M. Camilo

Figure 10 Eliseu Correia dos Santos 

The technical options involved in standardising the photographic record were therefore an important element of expression in “bringing out” connoted meanings that evoked the ethos of the text, that stated subjectivity which results from an individual’s professional career. That is why this work has established correlations with certain references in the field of photography. Recognising the importance of portraiture as a photographic genre and the existence of indispensable references (such as, for example, August Sander in his portrait series, or an artist who has greatly influenced me - Yann Arthus-Bertrand), some of whom even form part of the music and fashion cultural industries (such as Annie Leibovitz or Helmut Newton); recognising the importance of photographers who reintroduced the world of work and workers, as was the case in Portugal with Eduardo Gageiro and Augusto ^{Cabrita (1978}). I would highlight the collection by Gilberto ^{Gomes (1995}), an RTP documentary produced by ^{Cabrita (1978}), on the history of trains in Portugal, as well as a few scattered images of railway workers in family catalogues. My influences in this project mainly relate to the aforementioned Gaspard-Félix Tournachon (Félix Nadar) and André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri. The latter was remarkable because he was not only a pioneer in the art of the studio portrait, but also in terms of the value he placed on the “staging” of the body (the gesture, the pose) and of the prop (scenery, object, clothing) as meaningful resources capable of going beyond the more obvious and denotative meanings stemming from the presence of the person portrayed, towards those referring to a spirituality and a personality, present in the domain he called “photogeny” (^{Frizot & Ducros, 1987}, pp. 37-47; Figure 11 and Figure 12), but which, in the case of my work, I considered to be professionally specific (relating to the world of trains) and corporately specific (referring to CP).

Credits. Félix Nadar, 1855.

Figure 11 Baudelaire by Nadar 

Credits. Eugène Disdéri, c. 1860

Figure 12 Eugène Disdéri, self-portrait 

This meaning is more evident in certain photographs, such as the portrait of Artur Dias Henriques (Figure 9), a ticket inspector; in others, the image needs the text for the viewer to understand the importance of an apron and a platter in the portrait of Eliseu Correia do Santos, a machinist (Figure 10).

The dichotomy between the significance of a presence, of identification, and the connotative significance, evocative of a (professional and corporate) identity, also stemmed from references and influences on the status of photography in anthropology, as I have already mentioned. It is true that in this photographic project the pose and the prop were the result of an assumed photographic staging, more significant within the context of a symbolic universe adjacent to art than to science. However, according to Rosane de ^{Andrade (2002}, p. 28), a supposedly positivist gaze with a strict objective record, without consideration for the expression of feelings or emotions, is insufficient in ethnographic photography. According to the author, science needs to be reconciled with art so that it can signify something more immaterial, something related to an axiology, a culture, which requires the involvement of the observer with the object of study, in short, participant observation. Moreover, she gives examples that support this argument: Pierre Verger, in fact Pierre Fatumbi Verger (1902-1996; ^{Baptiste, 2009}), a French photographer-anthropologist who is fundamental to our knowledge of Afro-Brazilian culture in Salvador de Bahia, endeavoured to complement a documentary approach with a significant artistic record, which possessed the characteristic spirituality of a cultural dimension.

In this inventory, I would also like to mention Claúdia Andujar’s work on the Yanomami indigenous people (^{Andrade, 2002}, p. 62). Whilst it is true that her work is not studio-based (nor is Pierre Verger’s), the mention of this work stems from the complementary relationship that her images establish with words in order to evoke a spirituality, an objective that I tried to achieve in the photobook through the relationship between the photograph, the heading and text of the life stories, with the aim of evoking the subjective and corporate ethos mentioned above. These syncretisms, which had the aim of evoking those “fluid” connotative meanings, required a lot of tentative work, involving trial and error. It required knowledge and research about CP, working conditions, especially in the Barreiro workshops where they were trained, attentive listening to testimonies during the visits to the museum, in-depth interviews, writing up the testimonies in the form of short stories, discussion with the interviewees to verify data, reflecting with the museum staff when searching for props evocative of their careers, and a lot of time in the studio to take the photos, as well as selecting images. In this work, however, participant observation was not employed. The reason why can be understood: it is not centred on describing and analysing practices in use, but on describing memories.

Other particular aspects of the testimonies are also worth considering, and can be seen from the photographic record of each of the project’s photographs (those that make up the photobook and the exhibition) and from a “syntagmatic relationship” involving the sequential arrangement of the images and their relationship with the text and layout. The sequences, whether those resulting from the ordering of the images in the exhibition or the pagination in the book, are indicative of inevitable hierarchies, which reflected personal positions on the individuals photographed. Since I was the author of this project, I would like to make it clear that my concerns were of a communicational nature. The management of the collection of photographs was a testament to the desire to ensure the intelligibility of the meanings conveyed: in the case of the exhibition, the optimisation of the space, by arranging them in the foyer to make them easier to understand; as far as the photobook is concerned, their organisation throughout the pages was based on a thematic criterion relating to “CP trades”.

Second consideration: the staging of authenticity. I have been demonstrating how indispensable the testimonial aspect of the photography is due to its semiosic status as an index. Photography cannot exist as a document without being a “touch and go”, a record of the instant in which the moment and the movement of history were frozen by a personal choice on the part of the photographer.

However, photography also has other particularities that derive from its singularities as an icon and symbol and which cannot be ignored. It is testimony, but it is also fiction, arousing in the interpreter the conviction that the objects are being faithfully represented in the “highest definition” (interpretative). Curiously, this is one of the most contemporary meanings of photography, which does not necessarily correspond to the way it was received as a technological form in its early days. Photography is an icon, but not one of the most “complete” from the perspective of reliable reproduction, in the manner of a copy, of the various characteristics of the object. It is the product of the two-dimensional transformation of objects and their original black and white representation. The popular adoption of photography was due both to a fascination with the fidelity of the iconographic record (which surpassed the more accomplished pictorial realism) and to the specificity of the outputs of a technological mechanism that was revolutionary at the time - a mechanism for producing indices. The realistic “naturalisation” of photography as a representation gradually developed as this device became more popular, to the point where it was no longer received with strangeness and curiosity. It should be added that this naturalisation was also due to the technical capacity of the photographic camera to perpetuate ancestral and canonical forms of visual representation and understanding alongside a system of visual representation based on perspective and which had been in force since the Renaissance (^{Kossoy, 2021}, p. 18).

The (iconic) specificity of the photographic record generates illusions akin to verisimilitude: rather than signifying the truth (resulting from the referential relationship of photography as a sign that always presupposes the existence of a referent), it is important to consider the strategies utilised to signify the verisimilitude of “authenticity”. In the project, from an expressive point of view, this series of portraits was intentionally staged to provide a veridictory element alongside the significance of a “presence”, preferably of a corporate nature (thus evoking “trades” and a “business reality” - that of CP). This meaning was ensured by utilising a repertoire of iconic signs that, in their articulation, signified a narrative, a story: those relating to the pose of the photographed subjects, their relatively neutral expression, captured at a frontal angle against a homogeneous background which prevents the viewer from looking away, and the iconic signs illustrating uniforms and work tools. In this iconic element, the photographic staging serves the process of creating a narrative that enables authentication of a subjective nature (referring to the knowledge of the photographed subjects), but mainly of an institutional nature (referring to the subjects being recognised as “CP railway workers”).

Third consideration: on strategies and managing expectations. In the icons, among other particular aspects, “verisimilitudes” are decided, the effects of meaning relating to “referential illusions”. This specific aspect of the photographic records is complemented by a symbolic element. The photographic record is not only the documentary testimony of a presence and the iconic record of a resemblance, but also the meaning of an intentionality, of a purpose evocative of an axiology structured and articulated in an ideology. It is on the symbolic level of photography that aesthetics gives way to ethics, vision to moral conviction, permeated by at least three elements: mine, as I conceived and produced this project; that of the museum - A Estação, which supervised it; and that of the people portrayed, in terms of their individual conceptions of what a portrait and an “authentic testimony” should be. On the one hand, a “productive ideology”; on the other, an “institutional ideology”; and finally, a “personal ideology”, which houses values referring to a status that is both subjective and professional, to an ethos that is also “corporate”, alongside “being a CP railway worker”.

These ideological elements are associated with ways of generating meaning, through which the photographic record has acquired a coherence. Veridiction modalities and veridiction contracts play a fundamental role in this process (^{Greimas & Courtés, 1993}, pp. 417-419), and lead that which would be signified as an “authentic testimony” to result from the negotiated confluence of wishes and conceptions between the parties involved (myself, the museum and those portrayed).

In the case of the museum - A Estação, the “authentic testimony” was the result of a conception of a profession (as a railway worker), a corporate culture (having worked for CP and being retired) that determined a group of editorial expectations about what could and could not be photographed, what could and could not be reported. They were related to concerns inherent to the life stories. Nothing was reported or represented that was not directly related to the railway profession and the professional career at CP, despite the fact that there was equally interesting information gathered during the interviews and even during the visits, but not included here. These choices had implications not only for the content, but also for the way the photographs were taken. I have implemented this idea.

Madalena Nobre Rodrigues is in Figure 6. This image was originally entitled “Story of a Cat and Her Flag”, but was later changed to “Story of a ‘Cat’ and Her Flag”. It was explained to me that the word “cat” without inverted commas could give the text sexual connotations, when it was used by the interviewee herself (and reproduced in the quotation: “when I got married I came from Odemira to Montijo like a cat in a sack”) as a metaphor illustrating her recent youthful marriage and her later work at CP. I will come back to this, but to explain the difficulties that were involved in creating her portrait. In my case, expectations were related to production. For me, an “authentic testimony” would be the result of opting for a type of photographic staging (shown in the exhibition) and verbal expression (photobook). It would be the result of a multiplicity of technical options (flash with an sotfbox octobox along with a kicker light in a softbox strip with a grid on a burgundy background) and aesthetic specificity (the soft light refers to advertising photography; the pose, especially the position of the fingers, refers to paintings, both by Rubens and Leonardo da Vinci; the frontal or 3/4 pose updates aesthetic portraiture archetypes, specifically by Nadar and Disdéri). It should not be forgotten that this photographic staging was complemented by the text written and expressed within the style of a journalistic story (short paragraph, narrative synthesis, detailed recording of particulars), the life story (ethnography/anthropology/sociology) and the short story - with special emphasis on the narrative value of the denouement, where a paradigmatic writer emerged: Somerset ^{Maughan (n.d.}), with regard to his “Histórias dos Mares do Sul” (South Seas Stories), especially the novella “Chuva” (Rain).

In Figure 13 and Figure 14, it is possible to see different pages of the photobook that illustrate the relationships I wanted to establish between the photographs, headings and texts. Finally, in the case of the railway workers portrayed, the “authentic testimony” was also characterised by expectations arising from photographic modes of expression. In this regard, there are two episodes pertaining to certain difficulties in producing two portraits from the photobook, namely that of Madalena Nobre Rodrigues João (Figure 6) and José António Galhofas Carvoeira (Figure 7).

Credits. Eduardo J. M. Camilo

Figure 13 "Story of a ‘Cat’ and Her Flag”, photobook pagination 

Credits. Eduardo J. M. Camilo

Figure 14 "Everything Goes With Discipline and Logistic”, photobook pagination 

In the case of Madalena Rodrigues, with some initial difficulty, her portrait was created along with a kitten because it was intended to be a reenactment of the heading and a key phrase from her testimony, as I have already mentioned. The animal would, therefore, be the personification, the metaphor of her youth and the metonymy of the life story of a girl and young woman who gets married, is a housewife and mother and a worker at CP. This was explored as a significant element linking the portrait to the heading and the text. As for José Carvoeira, I could not even stage the heading (“Memories of a Boy Who Was Easter Lamb”). It concerned an incident in his life when he saw it threatened in a robbery at the station he managed, as he was very young when he began his career (“I joined the railway as a boy, and I was just an Easter lamb”).

These two are model episodes in this reflection on veridiction contracts and veridiction modalities: how the individual values of these railway workers were embodied in expectations (and desires) regarding the way they wanted to pose because they sensed that the portrait, being evocative of an ethos (“being”), would also imply a photographic expressiveness that seemed appropriate to them (“seeming”) which might not be compatible with what the photographer or the museum would like to be created. As I mentioned earlier, this particular aspect was already evident in the portraits of the bourgeoisie taken by Eugène Disdéri and Félix Nadar, in which the pose determined by the clients and, above all, the management of the appearance and the choice of clothing (“seeming”) were evocative of respectability, of a social class ethos (“being”). Why should it not be the same for these individuals, who wanted to “look good in the photograph”, that is, according to a set of expressive precepts (“seeming”) that “testified” in a coherent (that is, “authentic”) manner to their reputation as CP railway workers (“being”)?

These examples make it possible to understand how the meaning of “authentic testimony” is a dynamic process, which results from a negotiation, from “veridiction contracts” between parties: myself, the photographer, the museum and those photographed. In fact, the core of these disparities - sometimes more evident, other times more latent - can easily be explained by different photographic staging options: I based the project conceptually on a foundation hinged on “revelation”, a relatively obtuse expressive register (“not seeming”), that is, one that required deciphering, as if being a railway worker required the viewer to search for tell-tale signs existing both in the photographic records and in the accompanying texts, signs that progressively revealed the meanings of a subjective and corporate identity. This veridictory foundation was distinct from the conception of these two ex-railway workers: the more revealing the record was in its transparency, the greater the photographic clarity - as if there was nothing to hide or imply - the more “authentic” the testimony of their careers would be. The classic dichotomy between denotation and connotation is evident and, from a veridictory point of view, there are different expectations about a register involving secrecy (which is revealed and imposes hermeneutic activism - “not seeming”, but “being”) or truth (which is “given to the viewer/reader”, which is clarified - “seeming” and “being”).

What was done when this happened? Was the photograph, as a record, a symbol of the values of the photographer or of the photographed as to how an “authentic testimony” of a corporate identity should be signified? Which tug of war was more or less explicitly established?

In subjects such as ethnography and visual anthropology, where photography forms part of the field of participant observation, the answer is clear: the axiology that will prevail is the one that evokes the culture of the person photographed, although the ideal situation could be that of compatibility between the recording of culture - from an objective, even scientific perspective - and the “personalised” recording - from a subjective and artistic perspective. Given this, let us examine the project and see how it was indicative of a constant zigzagging, of “negotiations” to reconcile wills, and of disparate conceptions of what “authentic testimony” should mean. In the case of Madalena Nobre Rodrigues João’s photograph (Figure 6), my veridictory conception can be seen in a meaning that has to be “deciphered” and that is only revealed through the hermeneutic competence of the viewer and the reading of the text; on the other hand, José António Galhofas Carvoeira’s photograph (Figure 7) shows the transparency of a presence where everything happens in its immediacy.