Alfredo Cunha’s lens traces the fragile geographies of belonging in contemporary Portugal.
29 April 2026
At a moment when migration continues to redraw the cultural and political contours of Europe, ‘Rostos da Imigração’ emerges as both testimony and intervention. Presented at the UCCLA gallery in Lisbon, Alfredo Cunha’s photographic exhibition gathers a constellation of portraits that resist anonymity, insisting instead on the singularity of lived experience.
Cunha, whose career has long been intertwined with the visual memory of post-revolutionary Portugal, turns here toward quieter yet equally charged histories. His subjects, largely drawn from lusophone communities, are rendered with a directness that collapses distance between viewer and image. The camera does not aestheticise displacement. Rather, it lingers in the tension between visibility and vulnerability, offering faces as sites of negotiation between identity, memory and adaptation.
In line with broader conversations about immigration and its contemporary challenges, the exhibition situates portraiture as a political gesture. Each image becomes a counter-archive, foregrounding narratives of belonging that are often marginalised within dominant discourse.
In Cunha’s hands, photography operates not merely as documentation, but as an ethics of attention. To look, here, is to recognise.
This exhibition is on view at the Union of Capital Cities of Portuguese Language (UCCLA) in Lisbon until 20 May 2026.
