Doctor João Taborda, photographer awarded for “hidden curriculum”, died – Observer

Pneumologist João Taborda, an award-winning photographer, who in 2017 was one of the distinguished ones at the Siena International Photography Awards, died this Friday in Lisbon, at the age of 69, the family source told Lusa.

Winner of more than eight hundred distinctions, on the five continents, João Taborda had “a hidden curriculum” in photography, as he confessed in an interview with the Lusa agency, in 2017, the year he won first place in the Faces and Characters category, of the Awards Siena International Photography, and where he took his images to a Fnac Contact Test.

Retired physician, specialist in Pulmonology, who continued to practice at the Pulido Valente Hospital, in Lisbon, and later in Sesimbra, where he lived, João Taborda was honored by the local council, at the end of last year, with an exhibition at the Municipal Library, inaugurated on December 14, and with the attribution of the Medallion of the Village, approved unanimously, in a meeting of councilors, on November 20.

In an interview with the Lusa agency, in 2017, João Taborda said that the taste for photography emerged in adolescence, with his father and grandfather, owner of a laboratory, although at the beginning of his career he spent months without photographing, because the exercise of Medicine occupied him “from morning to night”.

He was part of the direction of the Portuguese Association of Photographic Art, from 1990 to 1993, won the Diário de Notícias Photographic Art Grand Prize, in 1992 and 1993, and was on the jury of several national and international photography salons.

João Taborda won more than 800 awards, including medals and honorable mentions, such as the 150 gold medals of international competitions, promoted by entities such as the American Society of Photography and the federations of countries and regions such as Argentina, Bosnia, India, Romania, Finland and Catalonia.

In 2017, he was invited by the direction of the PSP to make the book of the 150 years of this police force. At the time, the photograph of a woman, covered by the Portuguese flag, which she captured among the crowd at a music festival, was one of the winners of the Siena International Photography Awards, which elected the 42 most significant images of the year.

João Taborda, who died at dawn on Friday, was in a hospital in Lisbon.

Throughout his career, he always looked for “a humanized photograph”, “in a line that passes through the brain, through the eyes and through the heart”, as he then told Lusa, quoting the photojournalist Henri Cartier Bresson, who had for reference.

–