The beginning of Far Cry shows «road pictures», but then I came to Portugal. This uncompleted project was called Limbo. It was shown in Arles in 1986. [7] It was my attempt to describe Portugal. I didn’t come to any conclusion. I know it’s a place of nostalgia, a small country facing the sea, people have a huge inferiority complex. All this is very negative. I have to say that I hate the reasons why tourists like Portugal: always sunny, the food is good, the people are nice. You know, we are not like that. We are the opposite. You have to read Pessoa to know who we are. We are a strange bunch, somehow similar to Russians.

So I was first looking around at my friends and it was just a broken way of seeing. There are pictures of drugs and sex, some landscapes mixed with portraits. I also had my first son when I was 30. In a way it stopped the whole thing. I had a ten-year break, which is Limbo, the second part of Far Cry. After that I went on living in Paris and started Penumbra.

T.H.: Was Penumbra your first book project?

P.N.: No, I had done some books before. It actually says a lot about what I do now. My first book Para Sempre, self-published in 1981, had pictures from 1976 and was dedicated to my uncle and aunt. [8]