João Mariano
João Mariano, born in Lisbon in 1969, lives and works between Aljezur and Lisbon. He studied photography at Ar.Co and is the CEO and art director of 1000olhos, where he also pursues his passion for publishing, producing both his own books and those of the agency’s clients.
His photographic practice, developed through projects in Southern Portugal — often along the Costa Vicentina — first gained wider recognition in 1998 with the solo exhibition Guerreiros do Mar, presented at the Centro Cultural de Belém and published in book form the same year.
This was followed by the books Lugares Pouco Comuns (2000), Trabalho_de_Fundo (2001), Alambiques & Alquimistas (2007), and Mariscadores | Ria de Alvor: histórias de um lugar (2010). In 2014, he first presented O Conhecido Desconhecido, a personal exploration of the coastline of the municipality of Lagoa, later developed into a book and exhibition project in 2023. In 2016, Costa do Mar brought together, in a single volume, a synthesis of his early projects on the Costa Vicentina.
In 2018, Mariano presented Trezentos e Sessenta e Seis at the Arquivo Fotográfico Municipal de Lisboa, a project in which he photographed the same landscape every day for a year, exploring repetition, light, and the passage of time as a way of reflecting on the unrepeatable nature of photographic practice. Entre as Águas (2021) centred on the recognition of landscape, attention to detail, and the subjective experience of place, while Estiagem (2023) used a local reality as a point of departure for a reflection on global warming and climate change.
In 2026, he presents Ocean Spray at Lumina Galeria, an ongoing exploration of a territory that is at once physical and interior, where the Vicentine sea appears not as a backdrop, but as an assimilated substance.
Selected solo exhibitions include presentations at the Centro Cultural de Belém (1998), Museu da Imagem (2000), Centro de Artes de Sines (2008), Teatro Municipal de Portimão (2009), Encontros da Imagem (2010), Casa Manuel Teixeira Gomes (2010), Centro Português de Fotografia (2015), Arquivo Fotográfico Municipal de Lisboa (2016, 2022), Centro Cultural de Lagos (2018, 2025), Imago Lisboa Photo Festival (2023), and LAC – Laboratório de Actividades Criativas (2024). He also participated in a group exhibition at the Museu de Serralves (2002).
His work is held in several public and private collections.
Ocean Spray