PHOTO:Ioanna Katsibra-Lisboa

As I get lost in the unknown neighborhoods of Lisbon, trying to understand its hidden “language”, “Saudade” is the word that follows me like an echo. It is the word that dares to ascribe  the feeling of the soul between nostalgia and sorrow, the love for something that may have been completely lost. Looks like a melancholic Fado has pervaded every street, every corner of the capital that has felt what it means wildfire (how to forget the historic earthquake, the tsunami that engulfed it, and the fires that broke out on November 1, 1755?). Lisbon, spread over seven hills on the banks of the Tagus River, gives you the freedom to disassemble the city piece by piece and rebuild it in your own way, your own desires and fears. So I created my own Lisbon. I searched its openings in miradouros, where the city breathes, the sudden street corner, in the metallic sound of the tram, in the ship that  goes down Tagus river “to the reality of the sea”, in Fernando Pessoa’s wooden trunk with the 27,453 manuscripts that keep the city’s secrets well hidden. Fernando Pessoa’s Lisbon could be an Italo Calvino’s invisible city , the city that someone travels to relive his past and regain his future, with streets leading to the sky, with squares full of people living a moment that could be yours. Kalvino’s voice is following me “What you enjoy in a city is not its seven or seventy-seven wonders but the answer it gives to one of your questions or the question that city asks you, forcing you to answer”. Que amor ‘e este que me faz i re voltar, Lisboa? (What is the love that will makes me come back to Lisbon?) is the question that a stranger wrote on a mantelpiece overlooking the city from above. Fernando Pessoa answers “I get out of the tram exhausted and sleepy. I lived a whole life!”.-Ioanna Katsibra

CV: Ioanna Katsibra was born in Bremen, Germany. She studied at the FOCUS School of Photography and Audiovisual of Athens and attended seminars on history of art at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. She has also studied at the Aegean University of Human Studies. She has attended seminars on photography offered by renowned photographers Ed Kashi (National Geographic) and Constantine Manos (Magnum Photos).  With a scholarship from the European Union, she was accepted by the international agency SIPA PRESS of Paris where she worked as a photographer.  In 2001 she was awarded the Special Award for Photography by the Biennale “FODAR” in Bulgaria for her collection “Lost City”. She has held solo and group exhibitions in Greece, France, Bulgaria and Japan. Her works are in the collection of the Museum of Photography, Thessaloniki, in the permanent collection of the Museum of Photographic Arts Kiyosato, Japan, as well as in private collections.