Fernando Negreira

He, who was thinking of studying engineering, signed up and ended up with his second choice, the Literacy Campaigns (his first choice had been the Giacometti Brigades). Portugal had an illiteracy rate of around 25%. With a rail card provided by the Civic Service, he set off for Trás-os-Montes with a film crew shooting a film about the literacy campaigns. During August, sleeping on the floor of the Parish Council hall, the students taught adults at the primary school in Cachão, a village in the municipality of Mirandela, where an important agro-industrial complex was located. With him were nine other ‘teachers’ from Coimbra and Porto, and a supervisor, who was already a university student. They taught twice a day, in the late afternoon and early evening, because after 10pm the power often went out. People brought pots and pans, and that's where they ate. It was an exchange for exchange – teaching for bread.

Later, he left for another village in Trás-os-Montes, Argozelo, with the same team, and never thought about engineering again – he went into photojournalism.
Cláudia Lobo, journalist

The journey
The boy did well during his internship in 1976 and spent 50 years carrying his camera bag around, taking photographs for so many publications that there isn't enough space in this text to list them all. Let's just say that he worked for newspapers, magazines, newsletters, and his last job before retiring was as photography coordinator for the TIN-Trust In News publishing group. But the story begins on 26 April 1974, when the 17-year-old boy picks up his father's camera and records the soldiers resting after the long journey of the previous day, in front of the headquarters of the Portuguese Legion in Penha de França. He was already studying photography at the University Centre of Lisbon, then Pro-Unep. He did his first report on the MFA's Dynamisation Campaigns in Trás-os-Montes, as part of the Student Civic Service Literacy Brigades.

In 2025, with the exhibition “Monochrome50”, he decided to celebrate his 50-year career with 40 photos chosen from among those he took just for himself, for pleasure and for interest, in the first five years (1975-1980). It is a colourless and hard-working Lisbon, full of energy, but still covered in shades of grey, as hidden as the cars waiting for the canvas cover to be lifted for the weekend drive. Lisbon photographed with tenderness, enlivened by chimney sweeps, washerwomen, tinsmiths and sellers of fruit, vegetables, fish and wine barrels. Things from the time when Praça do Comércio was a giant car park.
Ana Sousa Dias, journalist