Rui Magalhães

(b. 1985) lives and works in Luanda.

His photography explores life in the streets of Luanda, surveying the city’s people and their systems and settings of adaptation to urban life.

Under his lens, the commonplace is captured with detailed intensity and attention to the expressions, attitudes and postures that expose mechanisms of visibility and opacity, mobility and permanence, resistance and survival in a city built on economic eventualities.

Studying the use and occupation of spaces, his practice is a mixture of critical archive of Luanda’s recent architectural history and urban archaeology, documenting the city’s inoperable relations.