Adelino Marques was taking a morning walk on the coast near his holiday home in Moledo, north-west Portugal, when he took this image. “It’s the northernmost beach in Portugal and is considered one of the most beautiful in the country,” Marques says. “It also has two unique features: a fort in the middle of the sea, which served as a defence against various attacks over the centuries and is now a national monument, and the hill you can see in the background of this image, Monte de Santa Tecla. It’s in the neighbouring country of Spain, but is nevertheless an icon of this beach.”
In the foreground of the image is a rock that echoes the shape of the hill, with a stone “placed atop in a way that would seem impossible. Pilgrims pass through this area every day to walk to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, a pilgrimage that covers around 500 miles [805km] and takes about a month to complete. The stone is like a sign, like a small mound pointing as if to say ‘That way’.”
Marques says that, since the 1970s, he has developed his own film negatives in a darkroom at his home in Gondomar, just outside central Porto. He thinks this has given him a preference for black-and-white images, no matter how they’re created. In this instance, he used the Hipstamatic app on his iPhone to apply a monochrome filter. “It allows me to better contrast the light and shapes,” Marques says. “Colour can be distracting. This filter helped to convey the serenity and resilience of the pilgrims who pass this way.”