The exhibition “PARAÍSO DE COURA”, by renowned photographer Alfredo Cunha, is dedicated to the Paredes de Coura Festival and brings together a selection of photographs, many of which go far beyond the stage where the concerts take place, as well as stories from the festival gathered over the past two decades.

The exhibition offers a visual journey through the atmosphere, music and backstage world of the festival, seen through the attentive eye of a photographer who has spent his career documenting major cultural and political moments in Portugal’s recent history.

In “A Santa Terra do Rock”, published in the book Paraíso de Coura (pp. 20–23), Valter Hugo Mãe writes:

“Some gazes do not simply observe. Some gazes create. Alfredo Cunha’s case is paradigmatic. What he sees creates a sense of identity and belonging. His testimony is seminal. He transforms the crowd into a nation. So often, when looking at an Alfredo Cunha photograph, I feel that, more than simply seeing what we are, he shows us how we can be, so that there might be a guiding baton worth following. His images are our ethics and serve as a kind of flag, because they are the exact sincerity of what exists.

Rarely does someone create a photographic monument. With Alfredo Cunha, the process is reversed. That is his nature. From monument to monument, he raises the essence of images, the deeper side of what the world is.

Years ago, I wrote that the Coura Festival should be prescribed by doctors and deducted from income tax. People should be sent to Coura, even if by force of a couple of pushes, because everything at the Festival heals us. I have seen many people recover from sadness, but also from a crooked back, senseless bewilderment, envy, ugliness or the flu. In Coura, severe ailments are cured, such as virginity after puberty, that thing which begins to rot.

The wonder here cannot be explained; it is pure lucidity. As soon as we arrive at Taboão Beach, where the festival takes place, everything appears more miraculous than Our Lady herself. Solar manifestations appear at midnight, real stars come close, and some may even come from someone’s heart. Everyone is beautiful and learns to love. (...)

(...) From one wonder to the next, here are the abundant graces captured by the eyes of the magnificent photographer who proves everything I have said. I shall die very old, cracking my bones to the rock of Coura. Beautiful and dead, simply from happiness and love.”