This exhibition recovers the photographic memory of the 25th of April 1974, giving it the meaning of an evocation, a tribute, an actuality.

On the squares and on the streets of the Lisbon center, where the events decided the uncertain destiny of the Revolution, turning it victorious, it is shown, in big formats, the photographs captured there, in the hours when the revolution is on the streets. That is indeed the 'initial, complete and clear' day that Sophia de Mello Breyner talked about. That is indeed the time when 'the poetry is on the street', as Maria Helena Vieira da Silva inscribed in the posters she made then.

From Comércio to Carmo Square, from Chiado to António Maria Cardoso, from Camões Square to Misericórdia Street, it is proposed an itinerary of the founding images of our freedom. Viewing the crowd and the individuals, the military and the citizens, the uniforms and the carnations, the battle tanks and the cars, the buildings and the places, the faces and the clothes, the attitudes and the gestures, the lights and the shadows, we can see that the spirit of the place matches the spirit of the times, connecting an iconographic aesthetics, a political history, a visual sociology and a liberating poetics.

Four decades after, we are on the streets where it happened what happened four decades ago. These images give us back the revolution, in its hours, its minutes and its seconds – and on its places. They give us a report of the anxiety. Show us a film of moving forward and backward, steps and pauses, waiting and hoping. They give us the new triptych of Nuno Gonçalves in its many faces, the words shout with a vertiginous voice, the fear to fail again, the construction of victory, the joy of being tired, the movement towards the future.

Integrated in the celebrations of the 40 years of April 25th promoted by the Lisbon City Council in collaboration with Mário Soares Foundation, the exhibition has as commissioners João Manuel dos Santos and João Pinharanda, the design by André Maranha, the research by Alfredo Caldeira and the exhibition production by Álvaro Costa de Matos.

The photographers are Alfredo Cunha, Carlos Gil, Eduardo Gageiro and Mário Varela Gomes. It was courage that made them walk on the streets at the dawn of that long and triumphal day. It was audacity that led them to this encounter with history.

These memorable images, in the authenticity of its testimonies and the hidden splendor of their aura, bring us their time to ours. In this dislocation, they move signs and meanings, updating, renewing and reinvigorating them. And bring back to our present times the creative energy of a rediscovered strong collective vehemence.