"In a text by José Bragança de Miranda (inspired precisely by the work of Manuel Valente Alves), there is an admirable reflection on the role of images in today's world. The aesthetic dimension is based on an art of chance. We understand then that every spectator, when confronted with the opacity that in extreme circumstances (and photography is almost always equivalent to the excessive) confuses our perception, it is dragged into everything that is not found in these same images. [...] Isolated seagulls against the unmistakable blue (at least for those who are used to looking at Moledo's sky on certain summer days) may suddenly start flying in circles around the fort at the mouth of the Rio Minho, transforming it, for a moment, into the Black Island of Hergé, from Tintim's album. They are absences and voids, after all filled by everything that accompanies the photographs. When they are filled in, an identity relation takes place that the verisimilitude with Caminha authorizes."
Eduardo Paz Barroso, “This utopian place...”, in n Eduardo Paz Barroso (coordination), Caminha, Espírito do Lugar, Caminha City Council, 2001