This new edition of CONTRAST aims to reinforce the universe of Photography Creation and Education by opening it to Multidisciplinarity in Art, Architecture and Design. The publication will have a public and bilingual online version (PT and ENG), thereby reaching a wider and international audience. In addition, its release coincides with several initiatives about Photography Education in Portugal, namely public presentations, exhibitions, meetings, conferences, seminars, debates. An online platform was created specifically for the CONTRAST project, to provide regular updates on the topic and aggregate contributions from all project collaborators, including partner institutions, students, professionals, and research professors.

This edition involved the direct participation of ten higher education schools that teach photography in various disciplinary and artistic fields: ARCO, DARQ, DCAM, EA.UCP, ESAP, ESMAD, FAUP, FBAUL, FBAUP and IPT. With their participation, these renowned institutions – national and international, public and private, polytechnics and universities – will ensure the continuity of ongoing research in Contemporary Artistic Documentary on Photography in various fields of knowledge, thus contributing to its multidisciplinary character and the management of new artistic, scientific and technological dynamics with other fields.

This edition joins a diverse set of reflections and critical analyses about photographic projects carried out in the context of teaching and research, representing the main Portuguese higher education institutions linked to teaching photography, and integrating curricular units wherein photography appears within the scope of other disciplines.

With the support from DGARTES for Creation and Edition, we achieved the national recognition that allowed us to include CONTRAST in the regular programs of curricular units, research centers and national and international conferences, such as IRI21 – the 17th edition of the Conference Images of the Imagined Real (ESMAD / IPP), on the topic of trackers; or events such as the Sophia Journal International Conference, organized by the research group Architecture, Art and Image from the Center for Studies in Architecture and Urbanism (CEAU/FAUP), together with other national and international institutions. Such international forums aim to promote a broad reflection and debate on Architecture, Art, and Image, exploring various themes common to the worlds of photography and architecture, reflecting on the potential of images, with special emphasis on photography, as instruments of ideation and research, as well as means capable of crossing borders and shifting boundaries between different disciplines.

We believe that, through its program, CONTRAST can act as catalyst for new dynamics in photography and create synergies between the various institutions involved. This means encouraging artistic initiatives that generate concrete results – contemporary photography projects – in different mediums, which will provide the motto and content for audio sessions in video format, the development of an online platform dedicated to the various photography seminars, debates, and traveling exhibitions, and production of content online and in book format for future memory and continuation of the project. 

In this context, the online platform will provide significant support for interaction between the various institutions involved, as well as promote the program and its contents, enhancing the relational dynamics between the various proposed products that exploit the potential of video/audio and online book formats.

The strategic combination of these activities is designed to generate a virtuous cycle where each component reinforces and fosters the project as a whole.