Rather than constructing an epic around the 630km pilgrimage, I chose to attune myself to the silent rhythms of others—to walk alongside, observe, and dwell within their presence. I shared their pace, their shelters, their pauses. The Camino de Portugues, rooted in Catholic tradition, is historically tethered to salvation. Yet, through conversation and shared silence, it became clear that the motivations of modern pilgrims diverged from religious doctrine—fragmented, intimate, and deeply personal.
This project does not reference specific societal structures, yet every handwritten reason offered by a pilgrim is a quiet echo of the world they left behind. In Nonlinear Frances (2017), I focused on the intimacy of portraiture—asking pilgrims to inscribe their reasons for walking, framing emotion and intention. In Nonlinear Portugues (2019), the gaze expanded. Here, sacred signifiers, handwritten testimonies, and mutable landscapes coalesce.
Nonlinear unfolds through three elements: the body of the walker, the written word, and the land they traverse. Together, they form a triad of gesture, intention, and transformation. The project explores how personal mythology collides with collective ritual, and how the semiotics of faith are rewritten through each step taken. It is a visual archive of internal pilgrimage shaped by time.
Initially seen as a route of faith, it revealed itself to me as a theater of plural motivations: grief, transition, healing, exile, or the desire to simply disappear from the din of society. I came to see the Camino not as a linear trail, but as a nonlinear archive of contemporary inner migrations.
The Nonlinear project consists of three elements: the pilgrim’s body, a handwritten note stating their reason for walking, and the landscape that absorbs them both. Here, text is not a caption—it is the conceptual spine. It acts in tension and harmony with the image, forming a dual language of presence and absence.
The handwritten texts are not anecdotal. They are poetic testimonies that reflect personal ruptures, yet are always tethered to broader social conditions. Each phrase, fragile and specific, becomes a portal into a life shaped by unseen forces. These notes serve as curatorial devices—selecting the image, constructing the frame, guiding the edit.
This work is conceived as a long-duration practice. By revisiting the Camino every few years, I trace the emotional and ideological shifts that redefine the act of pilgrimage across time.
The works unfolds not as a documentary sequence, but as a spatial essay—where image and text oscillate, interrupt, and echo one another. The result is a layered meditation on faith, identity, exile, and the quiet defiance of walking. This is not a story of arrival. It is the archaeology of ongoing departure.