Ci.CLO has overseen organizing and putting on the Porto Photography Biennial since 2019. Since then, they have been building an artistic ecosystem and a network of national and foreign partnerships that help put the city on the international photography map. Porto Photography Biennial has three distinct goals, according to the artistic director Virgílio Ferreira. The first is to be a platform for experimental artistic creation that crosses photography with other artistic, environmental, and social disciplines. The second is to be a platform for the dissemination of projects developed during the event. The third is to be a stage for the development of new ideas.

Acts of Empathy, the third edition of the Porto Photography Biennial, features 70 artists and 14 curators from 27 countries. The project celebrates the artistic practice, life, and projects the idea of the future, not only through the themes presented, but also through the emerging artists that it brings together and the territories and communities that it archives.

Jane Dyer and Virgílio Ferreira direct the 2023 event, held together by four nuclei that are the heart of this edition: Sustain, Enliven, Expand, and Connect. Crossing global and local views, each core shows different approaches that come to life in 16 exhibitions in 14 exhibition spaces in Porto.

Sustentar is a platform of creative labs in Portugal that looks at issues of urban sustainability. It encourages artists, researchers, and groups to share their knowledge in order to create visions for the regenerative growth of cities. Sustentar is made up of four shows that connect five artists to four sustainability projects in Portugal. The exhibitions were put together by the artistic directors of the Biennial. Interrelations, which is on display at the São Bento underground station, shows portraits by Matilde Viegas and Uwa Iduozee that were made during their artistic residencies in the neighborhoods of Lagarteiro and Cerco. At the Portuguese Center of Photography, Atravessar a Matéria do Tempo by Marcelo Moscheta is a poetic reflection on the process of thinking about the time of trees. Inês d’Orey’s Green Roofs, Grey Roofs, at Fundação Marques da Silva, talks about the environmental benefits of green roofs in cities. Jorge Graça’s PETRICOR, at ARTES-Mota Galiza, talks about the protection of threatened ecosystems and the sustainable use of water.

Reflecting on the idea of living in low density territories in the Douro, Vivificar supported the development of artistic residencies in the homes of local families. This gave twelve artists—Alexandre Delmar, André Tribbensee, Fábio Cunha, Hasan Daraghmeh, Ine Harrang, João Pedro Fonseca, José Miguel Pires, Maria Lusitano, Patrícia Geraldes, Raquel Schefer, Trond Lossius and Violeta Mour – an immersive experience in four regional municipalities – Alijó, Lamego, Mêda and Torre de Moncorvo – whose outcome is on display at Porto Wine Museum.

Through the national and international sharing of exhibition projects, ideas, and transdisciplinary practices, Conectar drives cultural and artistic ecosystems. Integrating Conectar, Ecologias Especulativas, curated by Jayne Dyer and Virgílio Ferreira, presents at the Portuguese Center of Photography three different provocations about the global present through the projects Acoustic Ocean and Forest Mind, by Swiss artist Ursula Biemann; The Backpack of Wingsby Korean artist duo Hyeseon Jeong and Seongmin Yuk; and Virtual Sanctuary for Fertilizing Mourning by Peruvian artist Eliana Otta. Deep Blue is an exhibition at the Palacete dos Viscondes de Balsemão that was put together by Mónica Miranda. It looks at issues of identity, memory, ecology, and faith. Together with Casa Árabe and Photo España, Betty Ketchedjan, Roger Mokbel, and Trek Haddad put together an exhibition of twelve Lebanese photographers called Luzes ou Sombras do que Foi e Continua a Ser at Casa Comum – Rectory of the University of Porto. The exhibition is about events in Lebanon in recent years and throughout its history. In I Pity the Garden, which is on display at Mala Voadora, the works of Mariam Natroshvili and Detu Jincharadze bring virtual reality, broken landscapes, and the idea of death to life.

Expandir helps new artists grow their work in academic and professional settings, with a focus on speculative, experimental, and activist ways of thinking. As part of Expandir, we feature the projects Fading Senses and Sensitive Territories by Lígia Poplawska and Vento (A)Mar by Dori Nigro and Paulo Pinto, which look at ideas of border, belonging, memory, and identity. Portraits of group authorship made since 2005 in Susana Lourenco Marques’ photography classes and shown in the exhibition Eternal Youth at the FBAUP Exhibition Pavilion show us the photographic imagination of people who are almost always the same age.

The works by Alice Martins and Teresa Bessa in Imagem em devir, curated by José Maia and on display at MIRA FORUM, are based on the idea that the body is always changing. In Preto|Branco|Verde (Casa da Imagem), Rita Leite and Yasmine Moradalizadeh explore the relationship between art and the environment through the sustainable and ecological production of images. Deslocamentos is an exhibition organized by Pablo Berástegui that is a collaboration between Bienal’23 and the Master’s degree in Documentary Photography at the University of SouthWales. It is based on the idea of displacement and how it relates to territory, family ties, and relationships between different species.

The sixteen shows that make up the four programmatic nuclei of the 2023 Porto Photography Biennial include photographic and videographic essays, works of poetic and political imaginations, and documentary and conceptual approaches. Acts of Empathy wants people to think about sustainability, the idea of community, and making change happen. From now until July 2, 123 mediation actions encourage people to get involved, with a focus on guided tours for families, tours, workshops, conversations, and book launches.