The Taguspark – City of Knowledge and the Cultural Center Association 11 present from today the photographic exhibition UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, a portrait of a country highly mobilized but also deeply divided. The exhibition will be exhibited at the Central Center of Taguspark, in Oeiras, from March 19 to May 14, and has free entry.
The show records the trip that photographer João Porfírio traveled with journalist João de Almeida Dias to cover the u.S. presidential campaign for the Observer. It was more than 2600 km in 16 days, between October 24 and November 7, 2020.
The work now on display registers a politically committed but severely divided country. In New York, they found a city that still suffered the trauma of the Covid-19 pandemic; portrayed Scranton in Pennsylvania, the hometown of Joe Biden, which Donald Trump accused of abandoning; in Philadelphia, they reported with the African-American community and came across the demonstrations and looting that followed the death of Walter Wallace Jr; in West Virginia, captured the environment of a drug recovery centre; in Youngstown, Ohio, they showed the survivors of a town where they closed a General Motors factory; in Pennsylvania, they attended one of Trump’s biggest rallies in this campaign; in Philadelphia, they covered one of Joe Biden’s innovative drive-in mode rallies; in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, they reported on election night at the home of a Donald Trump supporter; in Philadelphia, during the vote count, covered a pro-Biden and a pro-Trump rally; back to New York witnessed the celebrations of Joe Biden’s election on the streets.
João de Almeida Dias reports that “in the 16 days we were together in the Usa in reporting, we did not find anyone willing to be halfway. We heard who put Trump alongside the worst of the fascists and also who equated Biden with communist dictators. We also know anyone who has stopped talking to friends or family because they do not tolerate their political views. We went through four states: New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio, where we jointly reported 16. We went from the huge buildings of Manhattan to the plains of losing sight of Ohio. We spoke to people happy for the state of their country and others who felt on the edge. Here, we tell how it was these days, between the people we met and the challenges we encountered.”
For the curator of the exhibition, Maria Mann, “João Porfírio and João de Almeida Dias captured the very heart of america today in an eloquent and evocative documentation. His images and words place us directly at the center of a United America.”
Eduardo Baptista Correia, CEO of Taguspark, highlights “Taguspark’s commitment to supporting the transformation of exceptional journalistic work into an exhibition that portrays and recounts a remarkable moment in the recent history of the United States of America and democracies in the Western world, as are the American elections.”
This exhibition and catalogue were produced with the sponsorship of Taguspark and the support of casa da Imprensa, in partnership with the Observer. The cultural association CC11, which coordinated this initiative, was founded at the beginning of 2020 and aims to disseminate and promote photography and photojournalism in Portugal.