M E N I N A S is a community artistic project of interdisciplinary research between the area of ​​Performing Arts (Dance) and Photography, a commission from Ballet Contemporâneo do Norte in collaboration with the Santa Cruz do Bispo Prison Establishment.

Its broad objective is to promote artistic creation, human training and the development of personal, social and cognitive skills of the participating prisoners that oscillate between the real, the natural, the geometric and the chaotic, an objective that would never be viable without the generosity of each of the women who exhibited at the Centro Português de Fotografia on the 19th and 20th of July 2014.

Starting from a central point of the choreographic work of Joana Von Mayer Trindade with the inmates of the Special Prison Establishment of Santa Cruz do Bispo, my photographic journey extends along 3 axes. Working directly with the prisoners, representation of the prison building and documenting the creative process of these women.

A significant part of the process consisted on having sessions with each prisioner where they reveiled what they missed seeing from the exterior world. I would then take a picture of the subject and give it back to them.

Feeling the emotion of the women leaving the prison walls to visit the project exhibition was certainly one of the most impressive moments of my life.

Here is a sample of the project.