Recognising the archive as a research tool, in which its recombination permeates new affinities and analogies, I’m investigating coal mining, more specifically the Pejão Mines located in the Douro Carboniferous Basin. For this project I’m using the editing and montage of photographic images predominantly from the regular publication “O Pejão” published by the Douro Carboniferous Company (ECD).

The archive is used to anatomise the socio-political and identity impact of mining activity on the community of this territory marked by tradition, extractivism and abandonment. In this essay entitled “Periódica”, the archive images used challenge the imagery of this activity and the provenance of the photographs, giving them an apparently peripheral and liminal identity.