A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. Gonçalo Lobo Pinheiro’s photographs of Macau are certainly worth that and more. This latest collection consists of 100 photos taken during the last five years, a period which included Covid-19. The photojournalist, who been resident in Macau for well over a decade manages both to capture something of the inexpressible essence of the city, as well to provide visuals that will intrigue and engage anyone interested in either cities and the people that live in them. The “poética” of the title is apt.

The book is artistically laid out on matte paper, making use of significant amounts of white space, unlittered (as it were) with captions, an omission which is only a drawback if those who know Macau somewhat try to figure out exactly where (the unobvious) ones were taken. Each photo undoubtedly has a story, but Lobo allows us to tell our own. Given the book’s format, some wider photos must unfortunately cross the book’s gutter, but some compromises are inevitable.

Like his last outing O que foi, não volta ser… (“What was, won’t be again”), in which he matched old photos of Macau with present-day scenes, Poética Urbana is also very much about transitions: it is, he writes in the briefest of introductions,

 

a complication of diverse moments, mostly lives and captured in the old neighbourhoods of the territory, where one can still feel that special pulse of a Macao that barely exists anymore, but sill rightly resists complete disappearance.

 

Lobo Pinheiro is much taken with people in the streets, on buses, walking, going about their daily lives, mostly oblivious of him as photographer, although sometimes taking part. He’s also partial to umbrellas: his Macau is often wet, with darkly-lit corners, more Macau after the monsoon than the brightly-coloured images of the tourist pitch. This is Macau of back streets, small shops, bus stops, worktops, crosswalks, and motorcycles: the casinos and other latter-day developments for the tourist trade are largely absent.

Poética Urbana is very much the portrait of a community, one of which Lobo Pinheiro is himself a part and helping to safeguard.

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