• 1949
  • Agfa paper
  • Photography
  • Inv. FP207

Fernando Lemos

Manequim do Vespeira [Vespeira’s Mannequin]

This picture is a photograph Lemos made of one of the intervened mannequins Marcelino Vespeira showed at an exhibition in 1952 (Casa Jalco, Lisbon). Part of the collection of the CAM (O Menino Imperativo, 1952), this mannequin, whose head was replaced by a conch, is the only one to have survived to the present day.

 

The ghostly aspect of the mannequin is perfectly captured in this image. Lemos used the candles on its shoulders, which were part of Vespeira’s intervention, for lightning, obtaining a back light which simultaneously reveals and conceals. Thus, the mannequin seems to be suspended between two worlds – that of light and shadow, of the living and the dead, of recognition and strangeness.

 

Today, candles do no longer light the mannequin. Placed in a museum, it suggests a body embalmed by time, traversed by dried streams of wax that witness from a brief life, captured in this image by Fernando Lemos.

 

 

JO

 

May 2010

 

 

TypeValueUnitSection
Height30,5cm
Width23,8cm
TypeA definir
Fernando Lemos e o Surrealismo
Sintra, Sintra Museu de Arte Moderna, Colecção Berardo, 2005
Catálogo de exposição
À Sombra da Luz, À Luz da Sombra: Fotografias 1949-1952 / Fernando Lemos
São Paulo, Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, 2004
Catálogo
Fernando Lemos - À Sombra da Luz
Lisboa, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Centro de Arte Moderna, 1994
Catálogo de exposição
Fotógrafos Portugueses do Pós-Guerra (Obras da Colecção de Fotografia PLMJ)
Lisboa, Assírio e Alvim, 2004
Catálogo
Surrealismo em Portugal: 1934- 1952
Lisboa, Instituto Português de Museus e Junta de Extremadura, Consejeria de Cultura, 2001
Catálogo
Fernando Lemos - À Sombra da Luz
CAM/FCG
Curator: Jorge Molder (1947-)
1994-07-20 a 1994-10-09
Centro de Arte Moderna, Lisboa
Exposição programada por Jorge Molder e Fernando Lemos.
Updated on 23 january 2015

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