Ricardo Nunes is a photographer, book designer and publisher of the photo book publisher The Velvet Cell. His work is in the field of conceptual documentary photography and is dedicated to transitional spaces created by people.
Family Time
2017 – fortlaufend
160 Screenshots, Kunstdruck auf Acryl, 9 x 16 cm
The work “Family Time” is a photographic documentation, captured by screenshots, of the parent-child relationship between Ricardo and his family in Portugal across modern means of communication and borders. After his parents moved back to their roots in Portugal in 2008, the advent of new technologies made it possible for them to communicate regularly via digital contact and video calls. This contact intensified immensely, especially during the pandemic. Nunes began to record the conversations with screenshots, unaware that he had saved much more than just the image of a moment of the video call.
On September 18, 2021, his mother passed away. Without realizing it, he accompanied her week-long dying process through his documentation. This did not break off communication, only the mother was missing. Nunes also captures this grief, the process that took its toll on his father, on his smartphone. In the sequencing of his work, Nunes takes us into a family perspective collected over years on the happiness of birth, grief and death.
