O NAIPE EM FALTA
After publishing «Hotel La Solitude», I felt compelled to return to the places of the novel. With my camera in hand, I revisited hotel rooms, streets, cafés, thermal spas and landscapes. I was searching for a way to translate into images the atmosphere that had remained in my imagination long after the final page.
As I photographed, something unexpected happened. The characters returned. I seemed to see them moving through those spaces, talking to one another, questioning me, even criticising me. The photographs ceased to be an exercise in observation. They became a dialogue with a story that no longer seemed complete. I realised that «Hotel La Solitude» still held one final card waiting to be revealed. The missing suit was me.
The photographs in this series belong to that same universe. Some were taken before the novel was written, others alongside it, and others after its publication. Gradually, the two languages became intertwined. Reality seeped into fiction, and fiction seeped into reality. The photographic narrative «O Naipe em Falta» (The Missing Suit) neither seeks to illustrate nor explain the novel of the same name. It is another way of telling the same story.
To mark the publication of «O Naipe em Falta» (The Missing Suit), I produced a limited edition of 250 fine art prints, comprising 25 photographs in editions of 10 copies each, individually numbered and signed. Through each photograph, readers may recognise fragments of the text and construct an imaginative world of their own.
Technical Details:
Author: Vítor Leal Barros, 2026
Technique: Photography – Fine Art print on Ilford Smooth Cotton Rag 310gsm paper
Dimensions: 110×80 mm
Series: 25 photographs, in an edition of 10 copies per image, numbered and signed.