Thank you Maggie and Asher !
Yes Jerome this is a series about the effect of time passing, decay, abandoned and the action of vandalism on heritage in general.
I was expecting to find more decay than 2 years ago, or even from last year. Now, certain areas are not accessible any more or present obvious danger.
Before heading there I thought I would make some photographs of vandalized details and this series is the visual capture of a part.
No more B&W. I wanted a colored image. I have been trying and trying until I got this look. I have printed some 4 or 5 in A5 size for a Folio.
People visit this place and just destroy without any obvious interest. Just for the fun of it ! (??) Very stupid.
A lot of azulejos are gone perhaps to be sold I do not know, I can't imagine the reason.
Courts take ages to solve heritages and quarrels between heirs... This palace is supposed to belong to some people who inherited it.
Degradation is obvious and it accelerates in exponential values: the more degraded, the more quickly it degrades. A shame.
I predict that is 20 years the palace will be a ruin. Then, no visits will be possible.
Antonio,
This is not a problem unique to Portugal. In the UK, Eireland and France and Even in Beverly Hills, California, families who cannot afford the upkeep of large estates may donate them to the local government. However, without an administering organization in place with finding, the gift becomes a burden. First there needs to be lavish funding to attract and keep competent and professional administrative and technical staff. There's whole raft of needs to consider: how the property can be self funded and to what extent, how it should be marketed, local business and tourist infrastructural support, local opposition to traffic and outsiders and so much more.
Best is when the donor is not just giving up in exhaustion, but can actually build the responsible umbrella organization before they die or otherwise bow out of responsibility.
So it's survival of the fittest. When they can fill it with art, only then is thete a natural flow of tourists to make the project viable!
Life is full of tragedies - all the musicians and writers who don't get recognition, children who are not educated and entire communities obsessed with hate for another community they really have no business disliking at all.
So when a rich, aggressive business tycoon gives his treasure and provides a mansion to house it for the public, we have to hold our noses and say, "Thank You!" Or when charities feed the children in order to convert them, the same.
We are so bloody imperfect while suits, poetry and 60" wide photographic art might make it seem we're civilized, we are really so fundamentally clumsy, short sighted and irresponsible, just intoxicated more by our immediate needs than a balance that is more protective to the entire world we dominate!
Yesterday, a homeless character, a well known denizen in Chicago, was discovered badly beaten! So vandalization is not just of fine old buildings, but even of the derelict of our own people!
I cannot explain this at all!
Asher
