Alfredo Cunha

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Alfredo de Almeida Coelho da Cunha (* 1953 in Celorico da Beira ) is a Portuguese photojournalist and war correspondent .

He is known for his expressive black and white photos. Over 3 million photographs by Cunha are officially cataloged.

Alfredo Cunha is a family man and lives with his second wife in Vila Verde .

Life

Alfredo Cunha at the capital airport Osvaldo Vieira International in Guinea-Bissau, November 2017

Alfredo Cunha was born in Celorico da Beira and spent the first five years of his childhood there. He then lived with his family in Brazil for three years before they returned to Portugal. He lived in Lisbon from the age of 15.

At first he became a photographer against his will and at the insistence of his father, who earned his living as a portrait and wedding photographer, like his father before. As a teenager, Cunha discovered his joy in photography when he first made friends and later, as a hippie , took concert photos. His first picture worthy of exhibition is his picture of a spectator at a Procol Harum concert in Cascais in 1962.

In 1970 he started working as a photographer for advertising agencies in Lisbon. In 1972 he became a photographer for the newspaper O Século .

He married for the first time in 1973 and divorced ten years later.

The 1974 Carnation Revolution was his first major report. His frequently used photo of Captain Salgueiro Maia was taken and made him famous.

He immediately went to the Portuguese colonies , where he photographed the decolonization and independence of the country, especially in Guinea-Bissau .

In 1977 Cunha became a press photographer for the ANOP news agency (Agência Noticiosa Portuguesa, now Lusa ). He continued to travel to war and crisis areas. a. his photo of the victorious João Bernardo Vieira with a raised machine gun after his coup in Guinea-Bissau in November 1980.

Cunha was the official photographer for Portugal's President Ramalho Eanes from 1976 to 1978, and again from 1985 to 1996 for his successor, Mário Soares .

In 1989 he became co-founder and photo editor-in-chief of the newspaper Público until 1997 when he moved to Edipresse . From 2000 he took photos for the news magazine Focus.

Cunha continued to take photos in war and crisis areas, for example during the unrest in Romania until the end of Ceaușescu in 1989. He returned to Romania in 1991 for another report, where he was seriously injured in an accident. He met his second wife, the Portuguese doctor Maria Fernanda, who worked there for the Portuguese aid organization Assistência Médica Internacional (AMI). In 1997 he moved with her from Lisbon to Vila Verde in northern Portugal, near Guimarães , his wife's hometown.

Cunha also remained active as an internationally active photographer in his more tranquil place of residence; in 2003, for example, he reported on the Iraq war as a photo journalist . For the AMI he also traveled to a large number of countries, including Niger, Haiti, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Iraq and Bangladesh.

He first worked on television in 2002, together with journalist Ana Sousa Dias, in the magazine Por Outro Lado on the public service channel RTP2 .

From 2003 to 2012 Cunha was the photo editor of the newspaper Diário de Notícias and photo director of the Global Imagens agency.

In 2012 Alfredo Cunha retired as a professional photographer. The main reason for his withdrawal from day-to-day business was his increasing dissatisfaction with the industry, in which he felt himself being restricted by clients and in which good, detailed reports had become increasingly rare.

He has now given part of his photo collection to the Centro Português de Fotografia in Porto and to the photo archive of the city of Lisbon ( Arquivo Fotográfico Municipal de Lisboa ), of which he is the most important individual donor with 500 paper prints and 5000 digital images.

Since then he has realized various book and exhibition projects and works as a freelance photographer. a. for the aid organization AMI or the alternative tour operator Viagens Pinto Lopes, but also continues to do photo reports, such as the report on Haiti 2015 for the public.

Awards (selection)

Publications (selection)

  • Alfredo Cunha: A Cortina dos Dias / Obscured by Shadows. Porto Editora, Porto 2012 ( ISBN 978-972-0-06257-4 )
  • Alfredo Cunha, Luís Pedro Nunes (text): Toda a Esperança do Mundo. , Porto Editora , Porto 2015 ( ISBN 978-972-0-04780-9 )
  • Alfredo Cunha, Luís Pedro Nunes (text): Guiné-Bissau 1974/2015 , catalog for the exhibition Alfredo Cunhas 2017 in the municipal Galeria do Paço da Cultura in Guarda ( ISBN 978-989-8676-13-9 )
  • Alfredo Cunha: Fátima - Enquanto Houver Portugueses / As long as there are Portuguese. Porto Editora, Porto 2017 ( ISBN 978-972-0-06376-2 )
  • Alfredo Cunha: Mário Soares - Fotografias de 1974-2017. Porto Editora, Porto 2017 ( ISBN 978-972-0-03004-7 )
  • Alfredo Cunha, Adelino Gomes (text): Os Rapazes dos Tanques. Porto Editora, Porto 2017 ( ISBN 978-972-0-04634-5 )

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c O mundo a preto e branco tal como o vê Alfredo Cunha - "The world in black and white as Alfredo Cunha sees it" , article from March 1, 2017 in the Diário de Notícias newspaper , accessed on January 21, 2018
  2. ↑ a b c Detailed interview portrait of Alfredo Cunhas , article from April 23, 2017 in the Portuguese online newspaper Observador, accessed on January 21, 2018
  3. ↑ a b Exposição com 480 fotografias de Alfredo Cunha é inaugurada em Lisboa - “Exhibition with 480 photos of Alfredo Cunha opens in Lisbon” , article from March 3, 2017 in the Ípsilon public culture supplement, accessed on January 21, 2018
  4. ↑ Isto é o Haiti - “This is Haiti” , report from March 1, 2015 for the Público newspaper, online access from January 21, 2018
  5. ^ Alfredo Cunha, Luís Pedro Nunes: Toda a Esperança do Mundo. , Porto Editora , Porto 2015 ( ISBN 978-972-0-04780-9 ), biography in the blurb
  6. ^ Biography Alfredo Cunhas published by Porto Editora (Portuguese), accessed on January 21, 2018
  7. ^ Entry by Alfredo Cunhas in the author's trips of the tour operator Pinto Lopes , accessed on January 21, 2018
personal data
SURNAME Cunha, Alfredo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Alfredo de Almeida Coelho da Cunha (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Portuguese photojournalist
DATE OF BIRTH 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Celorico da Beira , Portugal