Paulo Nozolino: A Stranger's Shadow Falls
Paulo Nozolino; Penumbra; Scalo, Zürich; 1996; 112 pages; 50 monochrome photographs; ISBN 3-931141-32-2. Portuguese photographer Paulo Nozolino is one of those artists of the metaphysic eye whose take on common sights is closer to the effect of seeing through half-shut lids, at the periphery of vision, never looking directly at events but the aftermath or its bystanders. A salient fact of Iberian life is the Spanish and Portuguese people's erasure of the memory of centuries-long Arab rule, but Nozolino bucks this trend by confronting the Arab world on his southern doorstep, starting with Tangier and progressing onwards to Syria. Penumbra is a melancholy and grainy view of a world to which Nozolino stays a stranger via his lack of the language, though familiar enough through his frequent presence as a sympathetic eye. Written 1996. © Copyright Karl-Peter Gottschalk 1997.