Endstation: Vorort!
Lisbon. The capital of Portugal is a popular summer holiday destination due to its many cultural sights and geographical location on the Atlantic. What remains hidden to many: Everyday life beyond tuk-tuk tours and hotel routes.
The photo reportage ‘Endstation: Vorort’ attempts to escape the touristy atmosphere and concentrates on life outside the city centre and the depressing dreariness that prevails in some places away from the capital – a look behind the tourist machinery. An attempt to gain an unbiased impression of the suburb of Amadora in the north-west of Lisbon. Amadora is a place in the countryside with a grotesque mixture of suburban idyll, faded prefabricated and old buildings, a hint of ghetto and favela, historical architecture and a reputation as a social hotspot.
Unfortunately, research into this suburb and the neighbouring estates confirms the image of a social dumping ground for the financially weaker section of society. There are reports of shootouts between gang members and police officers, articles about the lack of prospects for young people looking for work and information about the migration background of the residents.
If you explore the illegal settlements not far from the tower blocks and concrete buildings as a stranger, you discover a completely different world. Favela-like conditions can be found here: Dwellings made from bulky rubbish and wooden sheds, huts made from building rubble and on the ruins of old houses. All crammed together on the infrastructural remains of demolished villages. There is a strange, often forbidding and even hostile atmosphere – an environment in which thoughtless tourists have no place. Alongside unassuming old people struggling with the consequences of poverty in old age, you come across dogs running loose who obviously don’t feel like cuddling, and dodgy young people who nobody would trust to have a career off the streets. End of the line: the suburbs!
