Lisbon - Day 7 - The Photo Ark

It took some wandering, back and forth, down little streets and onto bridges over the highway but I eventually found The Photo Ark.

Before entering the exhibit there was a display touch screen. After answering a number of questions on it, it determined I was most like a Panda.

The entrance through a hallway of photos and then you could take a selfie of yourself on a National Geographic cover.

Joel Sartore is a National Geographic photographer who has undertaken this project

Springbok Mantis. He isn't just taking pictures of cute creatures - bugs, butterflies, reptiles, the works!

Pyrenean Desman. Some of them are really weird looking.

Arctic Fox. He wants the photos to have a portrait quality so he shoots the animals against a black or white background with studio lights. He wants us to be able to look the animal in the eye and feel that it is looking back.

Florida Panther. A documentary was being shown, of how he gets the photos and it was amazing seeing him taking them in a tent that he brings with a velcro opening that he can just fit the lens through. He doesn't want to stress the animals too much so often has the tent set up so that they can explore it from their cages and go into it on their own.

Northern White Rhinoceros. For the bigger animals he had one wall of their enclosure painted.

Fennec Foxes. He did photograph some of the animals outside and the documentary showed his helpers running around with black boards trying to keep them behind lemurs in trees so he could get a photo.

Smooth coated Otter. Some of the animals were very curious about the lens and others attacked it. He had some birds attack him through the tent. There was blood.

Most of the pictures he did manage to get the sense that the animal was watching you.

I left feeling quite emotional; the beauty of the photographs and their subjects, the devotion of this photographer to this project and the number of animals that we are loosing, never to return. I walked for a little while before catching a tram back towards the city centre.

The tram, for some reason, stopped near this market and the driver said it was going no further. So before starting to walk home I went into the market.

One side was obviously a produce market but it was late in the day so it was just being closed down and cleaned.

I realized that I had read about this place in the guide book. It was called the Time Out Market.  It had been redone into a huge "food court" and it was packed. Mostly it was young locals but also a splattering of tourists.

I don't mean a "burgers and fries" kind of food court, this was high end and everything beautifully plated.

Behind the counters that ringed the central area, you could see into the kitchens and some had a sit down restaurant beyond, accessed from outside the market.

It was a great concept and obviously very successful.

Another way to take a tour of Lisbon

Walking back home, one of the neighbouring fairs was holding a Spring Market

and the statues in the centre were not impressed.

This huge poster was just around the corner from my hotel and I went in to investigate.

Héctor Julio Páride Bernabó or Carybé (Lanús, Buenos Aires province, Argentina, 7 February 1911 – Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, 2 October 1997) was a painter, engraver, draughtsman, illustrator, potter, sculptor, mural painter, researcher, historian and journalist. He settled in Brazil and naturalized as a Brazilian.
Carybé produced more than 5,000 works; his art was expressed through paintings, engravings, illustrations, wood carvings, mosaics and murals. From Wikipedia.

The woman at the door apologized for her English but I think she said that they were paintings depicting Portuguese exploration in South America.

Unfortunately the glass on the frames and the lighting made it very difficult to take pictures without getting glare.

They were simple little paintings but exquisitely done.

There were 2 rooms of them

and a story unfolded of mutual curiosity. I am sure there was more to it than that but all the write-ups were in Portuguese and my Duolingo lessons hadn't got that far.

I went back to the restaurant with all the clocks, for dinner.

It was another night with a line up at the door, loud and crowded. The bartender delivered my wine to me personally and went off in a string of Portuguese. My neighbour translated that he said I was "a good one because I had come back".

Lisbon - Day 7 - Museo Colecao Berardo

I am home now but need to complete my diary of the trip so I still have 2 more days to post.
It was still drizzly and cool so I went through the same routine as the previous day - next square over, down into the metro, buy an all day ticket and, up into the next square, walk over to the route 15 tram stop.

This time the first tram to come along was one of the old ones. I stood, hanging on to the loop from the ceiling getting bumped and bounced, as this tram was not nearly as smooth as the new ones.

The Belem Cultural Centre also houses the Berardo collection of contemporary art (1900 to 1960)

Pelas Janelas (1914) by Amadeo de Sousa-Cardoso. Each room held a particular style, era or artist group, work.

Tableau with yellow, black, blue, red and grey (1923) by Peit Mondrian. For the first time, I was just not in the mood. Nothing really grabbed me.

Fueilles Placees Selon les lois du Hasard (1937) by Jean Arp.  It was a learning experience as it clearly delineated the different styles and their chronological sequence. Also some sense of the countries they developed in.

Stringed Figure (1937-1976) by Henry Moore. There was a good mix of paintings, sculpture and 3 dimensional wall art.

Femme au mirior rouge, vert et jaune (1936) by Julio Gonzales. Many of the pieces were by artists that I didn't recognize.

La Touple (1956) by Hans Bellmer.

White Aphrodisiac Telephone (1936) by Salvador Dali. I never used to like Dali's work but as I have been exposed to more of it and gradually let go of my preference for realism I have come to really enjoy it. This was my favorite piece in the gallery.

One of the things I like about the 3 dimensional wall art is the way it changes as you walk towards, and around it. This was nails in wood.

Cacique (1983)  by Jesus Rafael Soto. I wonder how many times Mr Soto hit his thumb.

The last 2 rooms were Pop Art, divided into European and North American. Expansion Valise (1970) by Cesar.

Brillo Box (1964-68) and Ten Foot Flowers (1967) both by Andy Warhol.

Olds (1988-89) by Edward Ruscha.

Virnaburger (1965) by Mel Ramos.

Walking out of the gallery I was glad to see the weather had cleared as the next thing on my agenda would require some walking.

On one of the bus rides I had seen a building with a banner advertising the Photo Ark. I had read about this project somewhere and wanted to see if I could find it. I walked back past the Monastery and the Coach Museum. Stopped in for lunch at the little restaurant I had gone to before and it was so packed with locals that I had to have my sopa, pao e vinho tinto sitting at the bar.

Lisbon - Day 6 - Mosteiro dos Jeronimos, cloister.

The weather forecast for my last few days in Lisbon is abysmal - high percentage chance of showers, light rain, rain heavy at times etc. Luckily I was at the front of the line to get into the monastery when the sky opened and was able to duck in just in time.

The pictures don't do it justice especially as the light was so dismal but it took my breath away.

I gather the style is called Manueline

Wikipedia describes it as a sumptuous style of Portuguese architecture. The style was much influenced by the astonishing successes of the voyages of discovery of Portuguese navigators, from the coastal areas of Africa to the discovery of Brazil and the ocean routes to the Far East, drawing heavily on the style and decorations of East Indian temples. Although the period of this style did not last long (from 1490 to 1520), it played an important part in the development of Portuguese art.

The right hand wall in this photo backs on to the church and the doors are into little niches that the monks sat in to hear confession of those in the church. The write up there specified that the sailors going off on "discoveries" and trade trips to the new world came here to confess before leaving.

Everywhere the creamy coloured sandstone is intricately carved.

Some are the same patterns I have seen in tiles

but there's also creatures,

vines

and plants.

When it was pouring the gargoyle like waterspouts did their jobs.

When the sun pushed through, occasionally, everything glistened

With the sun the sandstone became almost honey coloured

and the elaborate shadows added to the complexity of the decoration.

On the opposite side of the cloister from the church was the Refectory, where the monks would take their meals.

It was lined with painted tiles, with a carved rope border, one of the nautical components included in the Manueline style.

The background was painted to imitate marble.

A small door led to the upper cloister

where you could also access the choir level of the church.

Here you could get a better look at all the statues around the top level.

and the upside down ice cream cone, twiddles, on the roof.

I took 100s of photos and with better light would have probably taken more. I edited them brutally before putting them on the computer and then edited again to choose what to put on the blog.

It was one of the few times that I would have liked a good camera (and known how to use it)

There were people with good cameras there and they were clicking like crazy too.

I find that if I get too focused on getting the perfect shots, I forget to enjoy the place itself, so I also walked around, absorbing it, for a while. It seemed to me that  although it is obviously beautiful, I would have thought it would have been distracting as the cloister was supposed to be a place for reflection and prayer.

A painted ceiling above the stairs leading out.

I was going to walk around a little, but one look at the threatening sky and I took the tram back to the hotel.