Recent content in Posts on João Pedro Almeida
“Those towers up there are the mountain pass,” we were told as we approached Babusar Pass. In my mind, it would be yet another mountain pass: pretty, scenic, with dramatic views of the surrounding mountains, especially since it was almost sunset and that often means pretty pictures. I imagined those towers were just the typical infrastructure you often find in high places like these,…
This might sound obvious, but I now have an entirely new website. Not just a facelift or a visual tweak—it’s been built from the ground up. Why start from scratch? Simply put, I couldn’t make the old one evolve into something that reflected where I am today anymore. Without diving too deep into technical details, the old setup had been patched and updated over time, but it had a fundamental…
Amplifest finally returned, and so did we. The pandemic meant that Amplifest , an eclectic music festival, was put on hold, more than one time. Meaning that 2022 would be the grand return to Hard Club, its traditional venue in the downtown of Porto. That hiatus meant that this was a double edition, two weekends that felt like two festivals in a row. And by the end of that “first festival” I was…
In January 2020 I was in Salsas, near Bragança, photographing one of the last winter solstice festivities of Trás-Os-Montes . I had been around the region since Christmas, as I’d done in previous years, and was about to return south, return home. As I was saying goodbye to André, and told him that we would meet again later in the year, he told, in a warm and direct way so typical of those from…
In last year’s Summer we were still with still knee deep into the pandemic (and by then we even didn’t knew it), so everyone chose to explore their backyard or to return to their roots. Myself included. One year later it feels like we’re in some kind of “ no man’s land “, in between what was left of lock-down and the glimpse of normality ahead, in some ways the loosening of the restrictions meant…
Maybe it’s my goth-ish nature, the gloomy side of my personality, but the Semana Santa (or Holy Week) always had a great appeal in me, despite myself being fully agnostic. It’s a season of atonement, of introspection, of penitence, the climax of a solemn season that is Lent. All this ends up in its very slow-paced, dark and intense rituals that becomes the core of every Holy Week tradition in…
As the 2021 version of lock-down is hopefully getting closer to a loosening to the restrictions here in Portugal, and maybe trying to anticipate what my upcoming months might be, I’m looking back to the aftermath of the 2020 version of lock-down. Last year things started to open in mid-May, and after a couple of months restricted to an apartment in Lisbon it was time to go to countryside, one of…
At Vila Boa, a village in the municipality of Vinhais on a slope of the Nogueira hills, the masks, bagpipes and all the things common to the pagan festivities of the Northeastern Portugal can also be found. There a festivity that initially was set to take place in the later days of the year slowly moved to happen a few weeks later, closer to the end of Winter. What was an ancient celebration of…
There are many Winter traditions in Trás-Os-Montes that, like so many in Europe, go all the way back to the pre-christian Winter Solstice celebrations. Without going into much details, because are too complex for me to explain well enough, these are rituals that mark the birth of the new year, the time when the days start to become longer and it’s meaning is a lot related with fertility and the…
On December 26, Saint Stephen day (the saint that brings this pagan festivity to the catholic realm), four young men wearing hats and colorful scarfs start the day by knocking on the houses at Ousilhão, a small village in the northeastern corner of Portugal. They’re followed by the sound of drums and bagpipes, and are welcomed by the homeowners with a table full of treats and drinks, the young men…