More than 130 historic photographs will help tell the story of Porto Santo in an exhibition opening to the public on 17 September at the Porto Santo Town Hall. Entitled “Imagens e Memória do Concelho do Porto Santo / Pictures and Memory of the Municipality of Porto Santo”, the exhibition will remain open until 31 December.
Promoted by the Regional Directorate for Archives, Libraries and Books (DRABL), through the Alberto Vieira Centre for Atlantic History Studies (CEHA-AV), the initiative brings together images produced between the late 19th century and the 1970s, offering visitors an opportunity to follow some of the major transformations in the island’s landscape, town and everyday life.
The exhibition is organised into seven thematic sections: “Coastal Landscapes”, “Arrivals and Departures”, “Town”, “Inland”, “Summer and Seaside Island”, “Water”, and “Religious and Civil Buildings”. Together, they explore aspects that profoundly shaped the development of Porto Santo, from isolation and difficulties in obtaining supplies to the growth of seaside tourism and leisure.
Water occupies a particularly important place in this historical journey. For centuries, its scarcity affected the daily lives of the population and restricted agriculture, which was largely dependent on dry farming, in a territory that frequently relied on Madeira for supplies of various goods. The island’s geography itself, characterised by gentler terrain, extensive sandy beaches and dune areas, also historically made Porto Santo more vulnerable to attacks by pirates and privateers.
The exhibition also recalls that the municipality of Porto Santo is one of the oldest in the archipelago. Its creation is believed to date back to the mid-15th century, shortly after settlement began, alongside the first municipalities established in the seats of the captaincies. The municipality still retains a unique feature within the regional context: one island, one municipality and one parish.
This historical reality can already be found in the accounts of the earliest chroniclers. In the 16th century, Jerónimo Dias Leite described Porto Santo as a healthy land with “good air”, while at the same time drawing attention to the scarcity of water, the lack of woodland and the consequences of the introduction of rabbits, whose rapid multiplication posed a serious threat to crops. Some of these enduring features, and above all the transformations that took place over the following centuries, can now be observed through photography.
The photographs come from several archival collections held by the Madeira Archives and Library and include works associated with photographers and studios such as Augusto João Soares, Foto Figueiras, Gino Romoli, Joaquim Augusto de Sousa, José Luís de Brito Gomes, Perestrellos Photographos, Photographia Vicentes and Varela Pècurto, as well as photographs from the Madeira Archives and Library Photographic Collection. Some of these collections form part of the holdings of the Madeira Photography Museum – Atelier Vicente’s.
“Pictures and Memory of the Municipality of Porto Santo” is the tenth exhibition within the “Pictures and Memory of the Municipalities of Madeira” project, launched in March 2019 as part of the commemorations marking the 600th anniversary of the discovery of the islands of Madeira and Porto Santo. In recent years, the project has travelled through different municipalities in the Region, with Santana hosting the eighth exhibition in 2024 and Porto Moniz the ninth in September 2025. The initiative seeks to preserve and promote visual records of the social, economic, cultural and landscape history of Madeira’s municipalities, with some of the exhibitions later also being published in catalogue form.
The Porto Santo exhibition is coordinated by Filipe dos Santos, Director of Services at CEHA-AV, who was also responsible for selecting the images, writing the introduction, editing the captions and translating the material, in collaboration with Dinis Gouveia Pacheco. Jorge Valdemar Guerra, Alda Pereira, Ana Men, Lícia Guerra, Manuela Marques, Tânia de Jesus and Zélia Fernandes Dantas also contributed to the captions. Graphic design is by Leonardo Vasconcelos, while Dalila Góis and Rute Rodrigues are responsible for the installation.
A guided tour of the exhibition is also scheduled for 17 September at the Porto Santo Town Hall. The opening coincides with the first day of the 2026 Columbus Festival, which will take place in Vila Baleira from 17 to 20 September.
The exhibition will remain open until 31 December.
[Translated from Portuguese with the assistance of artificial intelligence and reviewed by the author.]
