The house of the seven women

by Tito Mouraz

Photographs: Tito Mouraz

Text: Nuno Crespo, Tito Mouraz

Publisher: Dewi Lewis Publishing

108 pages

Pictures: 55 (b/w)

Year: 2016

ISBN: 978-1-911306-01-6

Price: 39 €

Comments: Hardback, first limited edition of 650, language: engl/prt, 30 x 24 cm

(...) for this photographer, landscape does not mean something one describes, represents or witnesses, but a place which is inhabited by tension and where the visible elements seem to invoke not only material presence, but also absences, spirits and magic. - Nuno Crespo

In the Beira-Alta region of Portugal, where Tito Mouraz was born and brought up, there is a house that is said to be haunted by the ghosts of seven women, all maiden sisters. One of them was a witch. On nights of the full moon, the women, in their white gowns, would fly from their balcony over to the leafy branches of the chestnut across the street. From there they would seduce men who passed-by.

Mouraz explores the myth of this place through raw, moody black and white images that capture the sense of the night, the fumes, the moon, the sounds of the trees. It is an environment where the past resonates deeply and within which the people portrayed seem attached, like trees, to the land in which they they live. Beira-Alta shaped Mouraz as a child and through his persistent return he searches out the slow changes of time through the gradual aging and transformation of a landscape.

Tito Mouraz studied Visual Arts and Photography in Porto and continues to live and work in the city. He has won a number of awards including the Emergentes DST International Photography Award and since 2009 he has exhibited widely throughout Europe with shows in Portugal, Spain, Poland, France and the UK. He is represented in Portugal by Módulo - Centro Difusor de Arte (Lisbon) and in France by Voies Off Gallery (Arles). His work is in the BES Art public collection and in several private collections.

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