Self-taught, a probation officer by profession, a keen observer and passionate about the arts, Alípio Padilha is the herald of a history of an ephemeral art. Aware that many of the performances he has witnessed have survived in our collective memory only through his photographs, Alípio Padilha photographs in order to think about the body and its movement. Born in Penacova, stung by the magic spindle of his father’s Polaroid at the age of 10, bewitched by a photograph hanging in an alternative Belgian bar in his village and transformed by a kiss given during a Susana Paiva course and by a Sérgio Godinho’s concert at Teatro Maria Matos, Padilha has traveled through and has fixed the history of the performing arts, mostly in Lisbon, over the last decades. Being a regular at Gaivotas and a guardian of the treasures that are found and created here, launching an exhibition of his work seemed to us the best way to celebrate a decade of Gaivotas 6. In a collection of 132 postcards that cover all the performances that Alípio Padilha has photographed in these rooms, I came home and thought: I really enjoy doing this! is a tribute to all those who create unforgettable memories and make us want to live by acting and caring, and by intertwining ourselves in each other’s history.

On display from October 6 to November 7, we invite you to enter our ‘Pink Room’; and travel in the daily life of this house since 2013 through one of the most sensible gazes of performing arts’ photography. At the end of the visit, you may choose a postcard to take home and stick on the wall, hang on the fridge door, or post it to that one person with that one body that has not moved with you for a long time and that you’d like to see again. To accompany this exhibition, you can also listen to the interviews with Alípio Padilha about his artistic career and his relationship with the Gaivotas; with Pedro Barreiro, current director of Espaço do Tempo, about his years as the artistic director of this place; with Praga (Cláudia Jardim, André e. Teodósio, Diogo Bento and José Maria Vieira Mendes) about the first steps of Gaivotas 6 and their most recent desires; and with Pedro Penim, current director of the Teatro Nacional D. Maria II and one of the founders of this space in 2013, as a member of the Praga Theatre.

‘Photography has this magic…you can be there and return to that place over and over again without ever having been there. And when I look at those photographs, I can inhabit the past of my past, even before my mother or I were born. I think that’s where my passion for photographing shows comes from… I often finish a session and think: this performance, this monstrous work by these people, when it’s over, will only survive through my photographs. There are shows that have only happened two or three times, which have been seen by 100 or 200 people, but which have then been discussed, thought about, studied by many more who may know what it was like because someone was there photographing it at the moment it happened… Of course, I didn’t know at the time that I was going to become a scene photographer, but I think it was in playing with that box of my grandmother’s photographs and stealing my father’s Polaroid that I became a photographer.’