Portobello is a photography project carried out over several visits to the Algarve between 2005 and 2007. Starting from a documentary approach to photography, Portobello explores the phenomenon of summer tourism and the iconographic imagery associated with it, whose institutional promotion based on techniques of marketing addresses the idea of ​​territory in terms of ‘place-brand’. A place to be, not to live or visit, but to try, consume for a week or two. Or, to quote the slogan of the Ministry of Economy and Innovation: «Algarve. Ready for lifetime experiences? ». The choice of the title Portobello thus seeks to resume the idea of
«Place-brand», transposing it to a place without very precise references, can be the Algarve, as well as the Spanish or Greek or Brazilian coast … A fictional and partially fictional place.
Portobello thus presents itself as a place on the verge of fiction, simultaneously real and invented, a kind of ‘theme park’ without a theme, but anchored in collective imagery related to holidays and built on stereotypes. As a documentary project, it also presents itself as a photographic essay on how the temporary occupation flows generated by summer tourism influence the construction of the identity of a place.