My photobook MORAESU ST. is now available.
Orders can be placed through the publisher’s website: https://www.sistemasolar.pt/pt/produto/761/pt/moraesu-st/. Should you encounter any difficulties, please feel free to contact me directly.
The book features a text by me in Portuguese, English, and Japanese.
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Moraesu Street is a street in Tokushima where Portuguese writer Wenceslau de Moraes (1854-1929) spent his final sixteen years. For Moraes, Japan was both a fascination and a sanctuary—a place captivating in its culture, customs, and people, and a refuge from the highly industrialized, war-torn West he no longer recognized. Yet, unable to fully integrate into Japan’s insular society, Moraes lived in Tokushima as one who lives beyond the world.
Widowed during his last decade, he devoted himself to memorializing his two deceased wives, immersing himself in nature’s contemplation and writing texts to be published back in Portugal. Today, his tomb and those of Ó-Yoné and Ko-Haru rest in a small local cemetery—a testament to a life lived between worlds.
Moraes was haunted, and in turn, would haunt his readers. Decades later, diplomat Armando Martins Janeira and filmmaker Paulo Rocha journeyed to Japan in the 1950s and 1980s, retracing Moraes’ footsteps. Their pilgrimages bore fruit: Janeira’s book Peregrino and Rocha’s film A Ilha de Moraes (Moraes’ Island).
MORAESU ST. emerges as photographer José Bértolo’s response to these spectral journeys. Born from a trip exploring Tokushima, Kobe, Osaka, Kyoto, and Nara, the book follows the paths of Moraes and his subsequent followers. It serves as a profound meditation on photography as the “language of the dead”—a phrase Moraes himself once wrote.
❮❮ 8 de Maio | Lisboa 5L
→ VIOLÊNCIA E PAIXÃO
Luchino Visconti | IT, FR
•8 de maio | 19H | Cinema Medeia Nimas
🏠 Lisboa 5L
📍@biblioteca_palaciogalveias_blx
Consulte toda a informação em lisboa5l.pt (link na bio).
#Lisboa5L #AsPessoasFazemABiblioteca #BLX #BibliotecasDeLisboa
CURSO
Literatura Japonesa em Português
Docente: José Bértolo
Data: 1 a 30 Jul 2026
Horário: dias 1, 3, 6, 9, 13, 16, 20, 23, 27 e 30 de Julho das 18h00 às 20h30
Duração: 25h | 2 ECTS
Morada: NOVA FCSH
Regime: presencial
Inscrições e informações em: https://www.fcsh.unl.pt/outros-cursos/literatura-japonesa-em-portugues/
Informações adicionais: [email protected]
It’s been a week today without Maria. When in February 2024 we learned that Maria had advanced stage cancer, we were told we had a couple of months left with her. Thankfully, and miraculously, she lived for another year. I hadn’t been shooting with film for some time, but felt the need to photograph her on film during the remaining months. Faced with the inevitability of her death, I preferred to have Maria preserved on film rather than data. (meanwhile, I’ve mostly returned to digital. The fetish of film doesn’t work for me) These are some of the snapshots I captured during those first two months.
SAVE THE DATE
365
@casadocomum
22/2 Sat.
18h
At the heart of 365 lies a photographic project undertaken between February 22, 2022 and February 21, 2023. For 365 days, José Bértolo captured his daily life with a compact camera – a silent witness portable and inconspicuous enough to carry in his pocket. As a visual diary, 365 explores the interplay between living and photographing (living to photograph... photographing to live...), and above all, examines the experience of living through photography. At its core, it’s an intimate calendar that, by virtue of being a calendar, became universal in nature. The session at Casa do Comum will showcase the project in video format.
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Na origem de 365 está um projecto fotográfico realizado entre 22 de Fevereiro de 2022 e 21 de Fevereiro de 2023. Durante 365 dias, José Bértolo registou o seu quotidiano com uma máquina compacta, testemunha silenciosa, suficientemente portátil e discreta para viajar no bolso. Na condição de diário visual, 365 é um projecto sobre viver e fotografar (viver para fotografar… fotografar para viver…), e, sobretudo, sobre viver através da fotografia. Acima de tudo, é um calendário íntimo que, por ser um calendário, também foi de toda a gente. A sessão na Casa do Comum apresentará o projecto em formato vídeo.
The latest @electra.magazine is out now and it includes a piece on my recent trip to Tokushima. You can read it in English or Portuguese. Some of the photos will be featured in MORAESU ST. — coming soon!
