These photographs are the result of and a testament to the long history of electricity: the photographer relied on artificial light to take them and his subjects are precisely some of the places, machines and tools used to replicate artificially this natural physical phenomenon.
With The Time Machine, Edgar Martins provides us with images of futuristic settings drawn decades ago and which, in his own words, reveal a “past of exhilarating technological innovation and optimistic belief in the future”. These photographs can be seen from 11 January to 17 March 2013 at the EDP Foundation Gallery in Porto.
Edgar Martins was born in Évora, grew up in Macau and lives in England. Having studied Fine Arts and Photography, first at the London Institute and later at the Royal College of Art, his work has been internationally recognised in numerous collections, such as the ones at Victoria & Albert Museum (London), National Media Museum (Bradford), Dallas Museum of Art (USA), Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, EDP Foundation or Carmignac Foundation (Paris). His first monograph, entitled Black Holes & Other Inconsistencies, received several awards, including the Thames & Hudson and RCA Society Book Art Prize, as well as the 2003 Jerwood Photography Award.
Between 2006 and 2011, Edgar Martins published other works, exhibited internationally in several different institutions, including PS1 MoMA (New York), Centro Cultural de Belém and Museu do Oriente (Lisbon), Centro Cultural Hélio Oiticica (Rio de Janeiro), The New Art Gallery Walsall (Walsall, England), among others.
In 2010, Centre Culturel Calouste Gulbenkian (Paris) hosted the first retrospective exhibition of the artist’s work. Between 2008 and 2010, Edgar Martins won the New York Photography Award, the BES Photo Award and the SONY World Photography Award.
More recently, the artist won the 2010 International Photography Awards (in the Fine Art—Abstract category), and he was nominated for the famous Prix Pictet, 2009. He was also chosen to represent Macau at the 54th edition of the Venice Biennale.
