THE CULTURAL ASSOCIATION ENCONTROS DA IMAGEM
Presently existing as a cultural association dedicated to the organization of the annual Festival Encontros da Imagem, this institution also seeks to develop a program of seminars, conferences and workshops that have helped form a growing audience in the multiple practices within photography.
Encontros da Imagem began in 1987 from a former association connected to the practices of amateur photography and cinema. The growing disinterest in cultural associations, losing ground to the intense political fervor after the 1974 revolution, led to a severe identity crisis of institutions created in former patterns and proposing activities that image technology itself had turned obsolete.
The project of the first edition of the Encontros sought precisely to go forth with a new concept of work, to bring new energy into an association that was about to fade at the moment when Braga was undergoing an intense development.
Thereafter, and throughout the twenty editions, the idea of the Encontros gained form, redefining itself progressively in order to adapt to the aesthetic and formal developments of creative photography which is the central subject of the event.
Little by little, steady contacts with personalities and institutions of the Portuguese and international photographic medium have been established, aiming at projecting a progressive structure. Existing today as a cultural association dedicated to the start of the annual meetings of the Image Festival, the structure also seeks to develop a whole program of seminars, conferences and workshops oriented by national and foreign experts who have helped to teach and inform a growing audience within the plurality of practices admitted in contemporary photography.
The creation of an educational space in the visual arts - GARE- is the fulfillment of the most recent aspiration of the association. It is a space created with the aim of promoting the study in various artistic expression forms, which acts as a nucleus for training.