6-8 April: Golegã, capital of horses and pioneer in photography
On Thursday evening, I arrived at the Parque de Campismo Municipal da Golegã. On a road sign I read that Golegã was the 'horse capital' of Portugal. I would stay here for two nights, but I was intrigued by the horses and also by the very special photo studio of the 19th century amateur photographer Carlos Relvas. Unfortunately, tomorrow is Good Friday, a festive day in Portugal when everything is closed. So I decided to spend a third night in Golegã to remain.
Indeed, everything in the village revolves around horses: signposts, nameplates, murals, etc. Every November, the village organises a big horse fair of international repute. The breed of horse is called 'Lusitano', a pure-blood breed with very good qualities for dressage and bullfighting.
There are many Lusitano horse breeders in the village. Their houses can be recognised by a large inverted 'woman symbol' (circle with cross on it), with their initials inside the circle. Golegã's central square is not paved; it is a huge equestrian centre surrounded by something resembling a racecourse. On YouTube, I found a video of the 2021 horse fair: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlO8FGG-enk
Next to the central horse square is the Lusitano horse-breeding club, the headquarters of the 'Feira Nacional do Cavalo' (FNC) and stables.
I also saw several horses and carriages in the streets.
Golegã is not only famous for its horses. It also has the most striking and luxurious photo studio I have ever seen. It was built in the 19th century by Carlos Relvas (1838 - 1894), a very wealthy nobleman and amateur photographer. Relvas' aim was to give photography, which painters looked at with contempt, the status of 'art'.
Between 1871 and 1875, he built a lush photo studio, which looks more like a palace or temple than a studio. It contains a whopping 33 tonnes of steel! The actual studio is on the upper floor and is made entirely of glass, including the roof. Curtains hang all around to manipulate the light in the studio. Daylight was very important because there was no electricity in Portuguese villages in the 19th century, so he could not use lamps and had to make do with candles in the dark. Hard to imagine, these days.
The ground floor has a technical darkroom with all the original equipment he used and a 'sepia' room to give photos a reddish sepia appearance. The sepia room is now being used to make a film about the life and photographic work of Relvas exhibit.
Relvas photographed not only the rich, but also ordinary and even very poor people, sailors, farmers, etc. He wanted to capture life in Portugal as it was at the time. However, all these people of little standing were not allowed into the luxurious reception area. They had to use external stairs that took them directly to the studio. However, Relvas not only documented their lives, he was also held in high esteem for his and his wife's charity.
Because he was so rich, Relvas could afford to buy state-of-the-art equipment and lenses all over Europe and experiment with the latest technological developments. He was allowed to join the very exclusive French Association of Photographers and won several awards around the world.
Photography was Relvas' passion, but he was also a talented horseman, bullfighter and inventor. After witnessing a shipwreck, he designed a highly functional lifeboat.
I followed the tour - the only way to visit the studio - along with Cathy and Ray from Australia. Ray is fascinated by the earliest photographic techniques and knows a lot about them. He explained to me how Relvas must have worked:
Downstairs is his technical darkroom, he coated one side of a clean glass plate with a thin layer of collodion, a fairly thick substance made of cotton. Then he dipped the plate in a silver nitrate bath and put it in a wooden cover. Then he ran upstairs to his studio where his model was posing, inserted the glass plate into a still-wet camera and exposed it from five to several dozen seconds. Then he slid the glass plate back into the sleeve and hurried back to his darkroom to develop and fix the picture... This whole process could take no longer than 2 minutes, depending on the length of the exposure time chosen.
Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take photos inside the house.
The other two museums I wanted to visit, the Rural Museum and Equuspolis with the Museu Municipal Martins Correia (painter and sculptor), are closed over the weekend.
16 September: Opening the door at Diamondway Buddhist Centre in Tallinn The centre's meditation sessions are open
