Portraits with room around them
In Nuno Serrão’s Icebergs, a red balloon takes the place of a face. Elsewhere, a figure stands in a courtyard with more concrete than company. The situations are distinct, but Serrão often gives the person less of the frame than a portrait usually would. Looking for them takes a moment, and that moment changes the picture’s pace.
The time it takes to look
Serrão uses an analogue medium-format camera. The format gives him a slower working rhythm, which suits a series concerned with the experience of being alone. The photographs leave enough information to orient ourselves: the interior of a bus, a tiled wall, the surface of a lake. They rarely tell us what the person in the frame is thinking. Their reserve gives us time to notice the distance between a figure and its surroundings.
Photographs set adrift
For a 2025 exhibition in Verona, curator Simone Azzoni planned to mount the images on sheets of plexiglass. The display carried the project’s central image into the gallery. Photographs could appear to float, with space between them and room for visitors to choose their own route. The series’ invitation to slow down became a practical decision about how people moved through the work.
Sources and image credits
Written by The Hasel Magazine. Background reporting: Garrick Webster, Creative Boom, August 20, 2025. Each image links to its source and includes the available credit.