A Portrait of Disease, An Experience at Kalafong Hospital
DAVID GOLDBLATT, 2000
The physician, Miguel Ribeiro, has dared to find beauty where other practitioners have been concerned only to objectify the subjects of their clinical and forensic studies, and where ordinary folk are wont to avert their eyes from fear or even disgust.
He has done this without fudging but indeed by precisely applying the understanding afforded him by his profession.Nor has he falsely dramatised or indulged in sentimentality. In the result he has produced photographs of pathologies of the human condition which are remarkable for the depth of the paradoxes they pose.Somehow the scientific is not obscured by or sacrificed to the aesthetic, yet the clarity of both, seemingly, is heightened.And far from beauty concealing or minimising what is suffered, it seems to make the condition suffered both real and immediate.Science and art, the beautiful and the terrible are here brought into rare and moving contiguity
-David Goldblatt
ABOUT MIGUEL
"My passions have been classical music since my mid-teens (Bach in particular), Samuel Beckett, medicine and, since I was 26, photography. But, quite suddenly and overwhelmingly, in early 2010 this pattern was overturned by the writing of the book 'Universo programado, uma alternativa ao Darwinismo e à religião'. My obsession with the subject continued through to my second book, 'Beyond Darwin…', the 4th edition of which I’ve just published."
- Miguel Ribeiro, April 2023
CV
Miguel Ribeiro was born in Lisbon, 18 August 1952.
MD
He is Fellow of the College of Physicians of South Africa and worked as a consultant in Internal Medicine at Tygerberg Hospital, Cape Town. He is currently the medical director of CMIL (Clínica Médica Internacional de Lisboa).
AUTHOR of the books
. “Universo Programado, uma alternativa ao Darwinismo e à religião”, Gradiva, Oct 2013.
. “Beyond Darwin, the Program Hypothesis”, Amazon.com, Oct 2018; second edition June 2019.
Several TALKS on the subject of my books at “Grémio Literário” de Lisboa, the latest on the occasion of the launching of “Beyond Darwin, the program hypothesis”, the 27 Sept 2018, and at Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa, the 9 July 2019.
THREE INTERVIEWS on the same theme:
. https://buzzlit.blogs.sapo.pt/universo-programado-uma-entrevista-a-53486 Universado Programado, by Helena Vasconcelos, 30 May 2014,
. Universo Programado, by Prof. Jorge Rio, 12 May 2016.
. https://www.rtp.pt/play/p260/prova-oral, by Fernando Alvim, 05 September 2019
RECOMMENDATIONS of the book "Beyond Darwin...":
. On the TV program "Eixo do Mal", by Clara Ferreira Alves, 18 July 2019.
PHOTOGRAPHER (miguelribeiro.net)
One-man exhibitions
Berliner Medizinhistorisches Museum, Berlin, Oct 2003–Feb 2004; “Abstract Body” IPSAR, Rome, June 2010; “Abstract Body”, Societa Umanitaria, Milan, Sept 2010; and also, one-man shows in Lisbon, Pretoria and Cape Town.
Group exhibitions
“The Century of the Body”, L’Elisée Museum, Lausanne, Sept–Dec 2000; Paris Photo 2002; “Parole de Peau”, Musée de la Civilisation, Quebec, Nov 2002–Jul 2003; Bienal de Nancy, April 2006. “Beauty, what for” Buenos Aires, winter 2006. “Darkside II”, Fotomuseum Winterthur, 2009.
His photographs also appeared in
Books: “The Century of the Body”. “Sleep”; 2005 and 2011 calendars of the Buhl Collection (USA); “Darkside II”, 2009; “The Body”.
Magazines and newspapers: Die Zeit; British Journal of Photography; The Independent; Basler Magazine; Der Tagesspiegel; Berliner Artz; Berliner Kultur; Medisch Vandaag; NEJM; Proto; Tabacaria; etc.