In All Islands are Mountains, photographer Nuno Serrão focuses on the contrasts of Portugal’s transforming landscape, confronting the subtle unease that emerges during long journeys.
«We live in an era of countless open tabs, binge-watching, and immediacy. Instant coffee, instant messages, highways, and priority boarding» as Serrão himself explains. Everything is designed to reduce waiting times. But what do we lose along the way as we rush toward the next destination?
In a time when everything is fast and direct, Serrão wonders if we are gradually losing the ability to recognize what we leave behind on the journey.
The photographer’s gaze turns to Portugal’s rural areas, where modernity has introduced large, fast infrastructures like brutalist highways designed to counter population exodus. At the base of these concrete giants, however, the old winding roads endure, gently intertwining with the landscape. These slow paths keep traditions and customs alive — traditions that the pace of modern life risks erasing.
Aware of the possible “perspective bias” that stems from the relationship between depth perception and the speed at which we move through time, Nuno Serrão decided to take a step back. Armed with a medium-format analog camera, he chose to slow down, walk, and be amazed by the power of stillness and boredom.
The result is a visual project that goes beyond capturing images. It invites the viewer to reflect on the human condition and the impact of speed and progress on our environment and our humanity. Each shot offers an opportunity to reconsider the value of slowness and what remains invisible when everything moves too quickly.
With his photography, Nuno Serrão does not provide definitive answers but poses urgent questions. He challenges us to slow down, observe, and ask ourselves if modernity is taking more than it promises to give. The old roads, with their sinuous and steady rhythm, are not just physical paths but metaphors for a life where time to think and feel is a precious and increasingly rare commodity.
