White Noise

António Júlio Duarte has been photographing Casino’s lobbies in Macau for the last 10 years. Shot at night, with a medium format camera and a flash, often in jetlagged mode, the lobbies became Duarte’s personal territory. The absurd luxury of the places combined with the strangeness of the objects, and the absence of human presence, creates a strong dreamlike feeling. We are led through a labyrinth, as if floating. The work is, both an important document about the little seen reality of Casino’s in Macau today, and a very personal reflection about East and West, about how to relate to the world through photography.

Antonio Julio Duarte (Lisbon, 1965) studied photography at Ar.Co, Lisbon between 1985 and 1989, and at Royal College of Art,London, UK , as a Gulbenkian scholar in 1991. In 1990 he was awarded the Kodak Award in Portugal and participated in the group exhibition European Kodak Award at Les Rencontres d’ Arles. Since then his photographic work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in Portugal and abroad at places like Centro Português de Fotografia (CPF), Oporto, Portugal, Museum fur Photographie, Braunschweig, Germany and Tokyo Photographic Center, Japan, among others. His work is represented in several public and private collections.