Research Catalogue

Created in 1979, from the legacy of the School of Fine Arts of the U.Porto (ESBAP), FAUP is one of the most prestigious schools of Architecture in the world. Here were trained and taught important names of the “Porto School” (one of the most influential currents of contemporary architecture in Portugal), such as Álvaro Siza Vieira and Eduardo Souto Moura, the only two Portuguese architects distinguished with the Pritzker Prize, considered the “Nobel Prize” of architecture. Located in Porto University’s Polo III (Campo Alegre), the complex of buildings that has housed the FAUP since 1992 is also one of the most emblematic creations of Siza Vieira’s career. A unique space that can be visited by anyone on one of the guided tours regularly organised by the faculty.

Although uniMAD | Media Arts and Design Research Unit is a newly created unit, it benefits from the long experience of its researchers and shares the objectives and reality of the young school to which it belongs. On the one hand, it is home to multiple areas of knowledge, spread across dimensions such as Design, Photography, Cinema, Communication and the Media, Information Technologies, Web Technologies and Digital Arts. On the other hand, it benefits in a very special way from their intersection, which allows it to be a privileged partner in artistic, research and investigation/action projects that require technical, technological, artistic and theoretical know-how. Aware of the reality and demands of contemporary societies, uniMAD realises the urgency of producing and making knowledge available by crossing artistic and technological production and the discourse on these products with broader concerns that we could call an ecological attitude in artistic and technological production and dissemination. uniMAD sees research as a factor in affirming the institution and its teaching staff at national and international level. To this end, there is an urgent need to stimulate commitment to local culture and the business community, raising awareness and involving researchers, promoters and political decision-makers in research programmes. In order to promote its growth, it projects its scope of intervention across the country in synergistic partnerships with similar institutions and in national and international networks. The pursuit of some of its main objectives involves promoting an attitude of rigorous participation in the construction of technological and artistic knowledge, the defence of a policy that allows artistic practices to be valued as processes of knowledge construction, involvement in the sustained progress of interactive media and web systems, the progressive and articulated increase of projects and the recognition of their added value through funding applications that ensure their continuity.

The Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon is the oldest art school in Portugal. With its roots in the Academy of Fine Arts founded in 1836, the Faculty of Fine Arts has evolved into a school of artistic education linked to contemporary art and design, with the permanent concern of occupying an active place in today's culture. Its location in the historic centre of the city, in the Convent of S. Francisco in Chiado, which has also been the centre for the affirmation of modernity in Lisbon since the 19th century, corresponds faithfully to the spirit that the Faculty of Fine Arts aims to embody: to develop an artistic culture that is attentive to our times and to implement artistic and research skills in the fields of art and design that respond to the challenges that today's globalised circulation of knowledge requires.

Founded in 1973 as an independent art school, Ar.Co is dedicated to the experimentation, training and divulging of arts, crafts and visual communication. The main training areas – Drawing, Painting, Photography, Jewellery, Ceramics, Illustration/Comics, Cinema/Movement Image, Art History and Theory, Individual and multi-disciplinary projects – offer complete professional programs, as well as topical opportunities for an introduction to a particular technical/aesthetic area, or for professional recycling. The therapeutic dimension of the training in the arts is, likewise, not forgotten. Ar.Co collaborates regularly with other schools and institutional or private entities, both national and international, promoting initiatives relevant to the school’s objectives and voccation. Ar.Co is a non-profit cultural association of public utility.

The objectives of this course are designed to enable students to acquire an understanding of photographic techniques and the History of Photography within its social, scientific, and artistic contexts. Additionally, the course aims to significantly enhance contemporary visual culture, fostering critical thinking in the interpretation of the world through images. Students are encouraged to develop personal projects grounded in their knowledge of the history of images, bridging theoretical understanding with artistic practice. These projects revolve around the concepts of self-portraiture and appropriation. The program briefly explores fundamental aspects of Photography, including Photography as a model of subjectivity, the multiplicative nature of images, Photography vs. Image, the image as a world construction, an ethics of Photography, and a brief history of Photography from 16th-century painting to Contemporary Photography. A significant portion of the program delves into Contemporary Photography through categorization of artistic practice and critical reception, with Contemporary Art as its conceptual and temporal framework. This categorization is organized around the following ideas: Photography before the act of photographing, pictorial narratives/staged photography, domestic and private narratives/subjective realism, objective photography/inexpressionism, document and art, appropriation, and citation. The potential for Photography existed before its time, and we must trace its origins back to at least the 16th century to identify the earliest signs of a proto-photographic worldview. It wasn’t until the 19th century, with the technological advancements brought about by the Industrial Revolution and scientific progress, that the prehistory of Photography began to take shape. As Pedro Miguel Frade notes in “Figures of Wonder,” it was the sciences that drove the creation of new visual prosthetics. By the end of the 19th century, Europe was using Photography as a means to mark time and record memories. It quickly became a sign of modernity. Baudelaire was among the first to recognize its potential, problematizing its destabilizing role in the artistic field, stating, ‘In these lamentable days, a new industry has emerged that has contributed to reinforcing the base stupidity of their belief… that art is nothing more and nothing less than the exact reproduction of nature… a vengeful God answered the voices of these people. Daguerre became their Messiah.’ Aside from Photography’s emergence within the realm of visual arts due to the exhaustion of traditional or fine arts, it’s also pertinent to consider this emergence as a result of constructing a world representation system founded on the notion of a mass-mediated information society. From the 1970s onward, photographic and television images are everywhere. The image becomes commonplace as an instrument for perceiving reality. Our experience today is entirely dependent on this condition. Given that our memory is fundamentally rooted in imagery/photography, it needs to be nourished by images. Hence, a world without photography is unimaginable. The issue of imagery in contemporary, highly mediatized societies poses, as someone noted, the central contemporary question regarding images: the impossibility of not seeing. What do we seek in a photograph? Perhaps what Walter Benjamin found in the works of Atget: complexity, multiplicity, and contradiction? In the same vein as Theodor Adorno spoke of the quality of art that makes us aware of contradictions because it does not resolve them. It is, therefore, the potential that is not fulfilled in the photographic object itself but rather in the participative reception of the viewer that makes good images singular. Finally, we might say, echoing Hugo Hofmannsthal, that the artist should be a seismograph: a place where the images of their time converge, so that art brings us knowledge as well as enjoyment.

The Degree in Photography exists since 2007. Throughout these years we have been proving that Photography, although suffering from a paradigm shift triggered by technological evolution, continues to manifest itself as an increasingly broad field of creation and thought. Never have so many photographs been made since the invention of photography. This fact per se confirms the need for a course that teaches how to make, think and create Photography, that promotes the formation of technologically educated citizens who orient themselves in this photographic world, that founds through Photography an understanding of contemporaneity. Through a comprehensive teaching that refuses to be held hostage to old dialectical discussions (digital vs. analog; color vs. black and white; documentary vs. conceptual; professional vs. artistic; etc.) empty of meaning, the Photography degree offers an innovative and committed teaching focused on the creation of technical, artistic and creative exploration skills. Supported by technical conditions, professional equipment and a dynamic environment, our degree is founded on the dedication and commitment of its professors and asks from its students an equal dedication and commitment. Integrated in DCAM – Department of Cinema and Media Arts, our bachelor’s degree is part of a set of areas of knowledge that define a territory of contemporary creation and technology. Our students become part of this whole and benefit from an energetic, creative and multidisciplinary environment.

The Porto School of the Arts is aimed at all those who are interested in ancient and contemporary artistic and cultural heritage, in diversified theoretical and practical training, who are curious and open to research and have a taste for problem-solving. Recognised both nationally and internationally, the Portuguese Catholic University in Porto stands out in Portugal's academic panorama. The Foz campus is located next to Foz Velha, one of the most favoured areas in the city of Porto, and includes eight teaching units. It consists of the Arts Building, the Central Building, the Américo Amorim Building, the Paraíso Building, the Restoration Building and the Biotechnology Building.

Bachelor degree Course, of university level, in compliance with the Bologna Process, according to the Dispatch n. º 5531/2019, published in the ‘Diário da República’, 2nd series, n. º 109, of June 6, 2019. The Visual Arts – Photography Bachelor Degree presents itself as an open educational process, in which the photographic device is explored in the scope of the interdisciplinary artistic practice and the contemporary creation. With this bahcelor degree, of universitary level, it is intended the qualified training of artists and photographers endowed with skills and critical capacity in their respective areas of action. Due to the broad nature of its syllabus, it favors the multiplicity of professional exits in accordance with the acquired learning, namely: artist, studio photographer, advertising, fashion, architecture, printer. The student also acquires competences that allows to continue in a path in the scope of the research.

The curricular unit of Photography and Cinema is composed of two distinct modules: the first corresponds to a theoretical exposition; the second, to a more practical model. The theoretical presentation aims to: understand the importance of relationships between images; presentation, analysis and discussion of photographic projects organized in narrative and thematic series; the creation of a visual repertoire from technological procedures related to the preparation, formatting and production of a visual narrative. In the practical component it is intended to know how to correctly use all items of the program from the realization of two projects presented during the semester. Project 01: Still image and Project 02: Moving image.

Main scientific area: Arts, Design and Communication. The program of the Degree in Photography offers a solid cultural, scientific and technical training, sustained by the balance between practical work, theoretical knowledge and the pedagogy of a faculty mostly composed of photographers with recognized work. The model of this cycle in Photography is based on the individual development of a diversified set of skills from the experimental historical processes to the post-production of digital photography.

The history of this institution dates back to the “Aula de Desenho e Debuxo”, a school of drawing created in 1780 to support the industrial companies of the city. In 1802, upon the opening session of the classes (120 students were enrolled by then) the painter Vieira Portuense called this school of drawing “Academy ” as a means to provide the institution with further renown. He also aimed to call for a more thorough education, based upon strong and diverse theoretical knowledge, as well as upon high quality artistic examples. However, the desired reform providing the school with more teaching staff and course units only took place in 1836, when the Academia Portuense de Belas Artes (Porto Academy of Fine Arts) was created. By then the Academy taught classes in Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, besides a preparatory course in Drawing. Still during the 19th century the Academy gives rise to the Escola Portuense de Belas Artes, which then becomes Escola Superior de Belas Artes (Higher School of Fine Arts) after 1950. The school then goes through several years of educational and artistic renown. Workshops of ceramics, glass, tapestry, engraving, stone, etc. In the 70s the course of Communication Design is created. In 1979 the course of architecture gains full autonomy and is then part of the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto. In 1994 the Escola Superior de Belas Artes do Porto was integrated in the University of Porto and was then to be called Faculty of Fine Arts.

PHOTOGRAPHY OF ARCHITECTURE, CITY AND TERRITORY SECOND CYCLE (FACT) The goal of this 1st Semester UC is to deepen the study and practice acquired in CAAD I, II on the use of photography and its potential to question and problematize the universe of Architecture, City and Territory. The intention is to lead students to develop a more mature photographic visual narrative, able to communicate new perspectives on space and urban reality, having as reference several authors, artistic currents and projects in the universe of contemporary photography and that may constitute a basis for their final dissertation at MIARQ. FACULTY OF ARCHITECTURE - UNIVERSITY OF PORTO (FAUP) Created in 1979, from the legacy of the School of Fine Arts of the U.Porto (ESBAP), FAUP is one of the most prestigious schools of Architecture in the world. Here were trained and taught important names of the “Porto School” (one of the most influential currents of contemporary architecture in Portugal), such as Álvaro Siza Vieira and Eduardo Souto Moura, the only two Portuguese architects distinguished with the Pritzker Prize, considered the “Nobel Prize” of architecture. Located in Porto University’s Polo III (Campo Alegre), the complex of buildings that has housed the FAUP since 1992 is also one of the most emblematic creations of Siza Vieira’s career. A unique space that can be visited by anyone on one of the guided tours regularly organised by the faculty.

PHOTOGRAPHY AND ARCHITECTURAL PROJECT COMMUNICATION FIRST CYCLE (CAAD II) The objective of the second semester curricular unit is to deepen the theoretical and practical bases in the universe of Image Synthesis, Photography and Graphic Design software applied to the Communication and Representation of Architecture Project. A component of photomontage is introduced and students are led to explore the use of various media, images and representation tools during the process of territory analysis, conception and representation of the architectural project exercise for the design and production of a photobook. FACULTY OF ARCHITECTURE - UNIVERSITY OF PORTO (FAUP) Created in 1979, from the legacy of the School of Fine Arts of the U.Porto (ESBAP), FAUP is one of the most prestigious schools of Architecture in the world. Here were trained and taught important names of the “Porto School” (one of the most influential currents of contemporary architecture in Portugal), such as Álvaro Siza Vieira and Eduardo Souto Moura, the only two Portuguese architects distinguished with the Pritzker Prize, considered the “Nobel Prize” of architecture. Located in Porto University’s Polo III (Campo Alegre), the complex of buildings that has housed the FAUP since 1992 is also one of the most emblematic creations of Siza Vieira’s career. A unique space that can be visited by anyone on one of the guided tours regularly organised by the faculty.

PHOTOGRAPHY AND ARCHITECTURAL PROJECT COMMUNICATION FIRST CYCLE (CAAD I) The objective of the first cycle curricular unit is to teach the theoretical and practical bases in the universe of Image Synthesis, Photography and Graphic Design software applied to the Communication and Representation of Architecture Project. A photography and design component is introduced – production of a photobook in order to build a visual narrative of communication of the intervention territory through the photobook device.