In April, the “Clube Militar” shall host another exhibition of ancient postcards, belonging to João Loureiro’s Collection, organized by the International Institute of Macau. This time, the exhibition will have a hundred and seventy photographic postcards, from the end of the nineteenth century until the sixties, referring to the Indian State (Goa, Damão and Diu), Macau and Timor and including, still, a brief introduction to give an historical context, related to the ancient “Império” and “Padroado do Oriente”.

"The Orient that started to be discovered by Portuguese navigators, soldiers, salesmen and missionary, had its matrix in the mythical Island of Moçambique, land where, among many other known ones, Vasco da Gama, Afonso de Albuquerque, Camões and S. Francisco Xavier passed.

Since then and until the last year of the Twentieth Century, when Macau’s administration was transferred to China, about five centuries passed, and throughout these centuries, in a global scale, the Portuguese language and cultural influence reached faraway lands from the Indian and the Pacific.

It is precisely this Portuguese cultural heritage in the Orient, as well as several aspects of the geographic, architectonic, social and human landscape of the territories that suffered its impact – documented in a particular and expressive way in the postcards – that this exhibition wishes to mark, contributing by this way, to enlarge the knowledge about it and to motivate its preservation."

João Loureiro, Member of IIM’s Board of Directors