Angelika Fischer

The unassuming gentleman who always strolled through Lisbon dressed neatly, as if the Portuguese capital was his personal salon, and who was never averse to a glass of wine in a café on the way, is Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935), undisputedly the greatest Portuguese poet of modern times. Alongside his day job as a commercial correspondent, he created an impressively multi-layered oeuvre in the seclusion of his bachelor life. He gained a foothold as a poet, essayist and editor and published the futuristic avant-garde magazine Orpheu - a lasting mouthpiece of literary modernism. Portugal's poetry also owes a number of invented poetic figures such as Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, Álvaro de Campos and the assistant accountant Bernardo Soares to his poetically multifaceted personality. Equipped with his own biography, Pessoa's main work was joined by important secondary works under other names, but nevertheless from Pessoa's pen. These include the "Book of Restlessness", in whose fragments of thought the poet's intimate reflections on his nation and its people are mirrored and the melancholic, poetic soul of Lisbon emerges. Catrin George Ponciano follows in the footsteps of the great author through his hometown. There, it sometimes seems to her, he could turn the corner at any time, so closely is the city associated with him. Lisbon is Pessoa and Pessoa is Lisbon. With her camera, Angelika Fischer visits Fernando Pessoa's haunts, the bars and cafés and all the places that inspired his exuberant imagination. It is his Lisbon that she presents in atmospheric black and white photographs.