Miguel Ribeiro
You have an impressive background in medicine and photography. Can you describe how your medical career influenced your approach to photography, particularly in your early work focused on medical photography in South Africa?
In July 1980, four years after my graduation in Medicine, about to turn 28, I left Lisbon to work at Kalafong, a teaching “Black Hospital” in Pretoria, South Africa. I had begun taking photographs one and a half years earlier.
It was the last decade of Apartheid and the S.A. regime found itself under intense international pressure that included in its criticism of the system audio-visual material from hospitals. For the Afrikaner Administration of Kalafong, and also for some of my colleagues, a foreigner with a camera was object of particular suspicion. My obstinacy, the almost fraternal trust of the head of Internal Medicine, Prof. D. S. Rossouw, and my contribution to the Department’s photographic collection, gradually softned the threat I originally represented.
The variety and exhuberance of pathology, in advanced stages yet unmodified by treatment, and the serene and dignified expressiveness of black patients in the face of disease and death — ideally suited to my belief that the illustration of disease should include the suffering inherent in it — moved me to record my impressions.
During the years that followed I fervently portrayed the “museum pathology” circulating through the wards. And to continue the documentation, I temporarily discontinued my specialization in Internal Medicine to postpone the required rotation through H.F. Verwoerd, the teachnig “White Hospital” of Pretoria. When that rotation finally took place, from September 1987 through August 1988, medical photography abruptly and permanently lost most of its magic to become an almost effortful and self-imposed affair — I had resumed my specialisation and Medicine was filling up nearly every space of my life. Not even when I returned to Kalafong for a last 5 month period before my departure to Cape Town, did the expected revival of the original enthusiasm materialize. Despite a lot more free time as a consultant at Tygerberg, a large multiracial hospital outside Cape Town, I barely photographed and finally dropped the subject. Back in Portugal, aware that to publish these photographs I should have an equivalent number of white patients, I resumed medical photography. But the lack of inner drive and, especially, a look back at my Kalafong collection as an intimate and closed box, rapidly made me put the idea to rest.
I want to believe that the Kalafong photographs, beyond documenting my professional experience during the Kalafong years, meet the rigor of medical illustration and reflect my overall attitude towards patients and disease.
Over the years, your focus in photography has evolved from medical subjects to more abstract representations and finally to capturing the everyday life around your home. What prompted these shifts in your thematic focus?
In mid-1991, with a daughter less than a year old and fearing the imminence of a civil war, we returned to Lisbon for good. In the following years, I only took travel and leisure photographs. Then, in 2000, I started the ‘Abstract Body’ series, the aim of which was an abstract representation of a part of my own body as an object stripped of its human identity — to be explored as a landscape or for its textures or sculptural potential. Perhaps what best reflects the somewhat obsessive nature of my work from this period are short videos made from sequences of dozens of black and white photographs from a particular series. The music was usually by contemporary composer Isabel Soveral or, in a few cases, sounds from nature or generated by me. All these videos date from the end of 2007 and 2008. To fill the long hours spent scanning over a thousand negatives, I turned to popular science television documentaries and books, such as those by Michio Kaku and Paul Davies — and I was so gripped by the unimaginable complexity of the cosmos and life that in early 2010 I was already starting to write my first book.
Having practiced medicine and photography concurrently, how do you balance the emotional and technical demands of both professions? Do you find that one influences the other in unexpected ways?
Until I switched to digital I maintained the fairly rigid schedule of working in the dark room essentially every weekend — in S.A. provided I wasn’t on duty, and in Lisbon subject to the inevitable interruptions to visit patients every day, either at home or in hospital, inherent to private practice.
In early 2009 I changed to digital and started the “At Home” series, which is about finding allure in trivial things and people in my living space. Adapting to the time constraints of my professional life, the three series share the comon denomintor of being indoor photography — i.e. not only does it allow me to stop and start again at any time, but it saves me the time of going out and waiting for the perfect moment and light to photograph.
If, compared to other professionals, doctors are indeed more often artists (a cliché — I’m not sure it’s true), I would say that if the impulse for artistic expression arises from interior disquiet, it is not impossible that doctor’s professional experience subliminally helps to create the suitable inner world. Alternatively, the individual with this kind of mindset is more likely to choose medicine as a profession.
Could you share some insights into the technical aspects of your photography, especially when dealing with challenging subjects like abstract body landscapes or intimate indoor settings?
For most of the “Abstract Body” photographs I used a small video camera mounted on a tripod and pointing at the viewfinder of an Hasselblad 2000 FCM camera. This allowed me to adjust the framing and focus on a hand-held monitor. Finally, a 6m long pneumatic shutter release, trigggered by hand or foot (or even with a bite), completed the contraption. For these photos I mostly used artificial lighting. The majority of the “At Home” photos were quite straitforward, taken either with digital Hasselblad or cell phone and using natural or artifical light.
Your books propose a unique perspective on evolution and the universe. How does your scientific background as a physician inform your theories in your writing?
Medicine gives some background on evolution and genetics. But above all it equips the curious with the rigor and pragmatism to find workable solutions to problems. While a wild theory of a physicist is generally inconsequential, a doctor’s is not, reason why doctors are trained to constantly revise their ideas. I believe physics today is in crisis because stuck in fundamental premises it refuses to abandon. As an atheist since my mid-teens, I reluctantly accepted that in order to explain our universe, with its integrated evolution towards complexity — like a PC video game, only conscious and in 3D — the need for a program is incontrovertible. In this model, the Big Bang, space-time, the exact laws of physics and fundamental particles (‘fine-tuning’) are interpreted as foundational parameters and settings of the proposed program.
You've given several talks on your books and other topics like artificial intelligence. What do you find most rewarding about engaging with the public through lectures and discussions?
Public talks take a lot of time to prepare, especially in my case as I’m shy and a hopeless improviser. But the process of engaging with audiences is certainly enriching and rewarding as it offers an opportunity to share insights and spark debate.
You've had numerous one-man and group exhibitions across various continents. What do you consider when choosing pieces for an exhibition, and how do you feel these presentations are received by different international audiences?
My best exhibition was “A portrait of disease” in Berlin, 2003. It consisted of 54 large-format photographs of Kalafong patients. It was a success despite the sensitivity of the subject — “Die Zeit” devoted a full page, with 8 photos, to the exhibition; several German and a few foreign newspapers and magazines also covered it. The South African Ambassador was at the opening and was most receptive. Visitor’s written comments were overwhelmingly favorable, one nurse typically stating she was expecting voyeurism and instead found compassion, etc. The late S.A. photographer David Goldblatt wrote about these photos “… Somehow the scientific is not obscured by or sacrificed to the esthetic, yet the clarity of both, seemingly, is heightened. And far from beauty concealing or minimizing what is suffered, it seems to make the condition suffered both real and immediate. Science and art, the beautiful and the terrible are here brought into a rare and moving contiguity”.
But illness is a social handicap in the modern world, so exposure is understandably a huge taboo. Even the written consents to photograph could be reinterpreted as some kind of colonial exploitation, disregarding the fact that the patients loved being photographed and did their best to comply — something that is readily apparent in the photos and for which I’m immensely grateful. In any case, even 40 years on average after they were taken, and with the patients dead or unrecognisable, these photographs may not be publishable without much controversy until they are considered an historical document.
Who are some of the photographers or artists who have influenced your work the most, and how do they manifest in your own creations?
This may sound pedantic but I don’t feel many influences as a photographer, perhaps a reflection of my limited culture on the history of photography. For example, some said that my Abstract Body photos were inspired by A. R. Minkkinen or John Coplans, but I actually first heard of these photographers through these comments — anyway, I think the spirit of the photos in either case is quite different from mine. The same goes for my At Home series. The only photographer whith whom I see affinities is E. S. Curtis in regard to the Kalafong photos. Again I was well into the series when I knew about him. As I see it, Curtis is not concerned with portraying the particular Indian person, the individual, but instead with creating a prototype, an idealized representation of the Indian chief, the warrior, etc. Likewise, my aim with medical photographs is not to portray the individual patient but instead transform him/her into a prototype of the disease (or of a particular manifestation of it) — in other words, the aim is a portrait of disease. For example, a rheumatoid hand, besides depicting the typical deformities should convey the accompanying incapacity and pain. Please note this is a conceptual analogy and that’s where it all ends, I’m not comparing myself to Curtis in the slightest.
Are there new themes or projects in photography or writing that you are currently exploring or plan to explore in the near future?
After all this time I’m still quite enthusiastic about the “At Home” series because it’s an open topic and it’s challenging to find new ideas within a limited number of objects. But I’m planing to replace the “Africa” series with “Memories” on my website miguelribeiro.net to allow me to use selected photos from different genres. On the other hand, the theme of my book is infinite and don’t see mysef swapping it for anything else. To give you an idea of the scope, I was invited to give a talk on Artificial intelligence (AI) in June 2021 (and again in Oct 2023, and to write a paper on the subject in May 2024) simply because there was a chapter on AI in my book (in fact, already in the 2013 edition of my first book).
Having achieved success in several disciplines, what advice would you offer to young photographers and authors who aspire to have a diverse and impactful career like yours?
Basically it is another cliché, but I can't think of anything else: Focus on what you feel the need to say and find the best vehicle and form to express it. Meaningful artistic expression is usually based on genuine feelings or convictions, not fashions.
A few biographical notes
I was born in Lisbon 18/8/52. We moved to Mozambique when I was two. My father was a doctor and was placed in the interior, first Inharrime and then Mutarara (a village in the middle of Mozambique with a white population of about ten people). After about two years we settled in what was then Lourenço Marques (now Maputo). As adolescent I was an introvert. My first passion was classical music. I took guitar lessons from my midteens but wasn’t gifted, though I “played” Villa-Lobos and transcriptions from Bach’s cello suites and violin sonatas an partitas. The German consulate had in the sixties a fantastic collection of classical music and lent records to take home. I avdly consumed a substantial part of that collection over 5 or 6 years — that was untill my return back to Lisbon in 1972, for the 3rd year of medical school. It shaped my musical taste which eventually spanned from Bach (my alltime idol) to Xenakis, Ligeti and Berio, through Beethoven, Mahler and Bartok. About 1 year after my arrival in South Africa I started taking cello lessons, which I continued for about 4 years — to my teacher’s horror, within 6 months I was already starting with selected movements of Bach’s cello suites. Though always aware of my lack of talent, I loved playing and was sad to give it up. Since my adolescence — whether I was studying, driving, photographing, printing, always — I was listening to music. That all changed in early 2010 when I started writing my first book. From then on, unless I was socializing or working, my mind was with the subject. But I had a problem — I was unable to conceptualize while listening to music, so I simply switched it off.
In my midteens I was reading everything from Sartre to Nietzsche, until I discovered S. Beckett at the age of 18. From then on, obscessively and exclusively, I read his entire work, the novels over and over again in English, French and Portuguese. For a brief change in atmosphere, about once every 2 or 3 years, I would plunge into Lautreamont’s “Les Chants de Maldoror” — of which, as of a few Beckett’s works, I knew by heart some passages. This pattern lasted roughly until I returned from South Africa, in 1991. Then 39 and now permanetly back in Lisbon, I virtually stopped reading. That lasted until around 2008, when my move from analogue to digital photography unexpectedly led to the discovery of science as another focus of interest. While devouring the relevant literature, a new passion emerged — writing. Since 2010 most of my free time has been devoted to it. My first book, “Universo Programado, uma alternativa ao Darwinismo e à religião” was published by Gradiva in 2013. My second book “Beyond Darwin, the program hypothesis” — 4th edition 2022 — continues the idea of the universe as a vast computing entity.