Tyler Shields brings film-based photography to the Algarve

American photographer and filmmaker Tyler Shields has brought his work to Portugal for the first time with a solo exhibition at In The Pink Gallery in Loulé, which opened on 27 February.

The gallery show includes a selection of his monochrome silhouette works alongside other photographs, and also introduced two pieces publicly for the first time: Nine Lips and Veil.

For Shields, the Algarve visit was also a first.

“I’d been to Porto and Lisbon before, but this was my first time there,” he said. “It’s beautiful.”

He spent four days in the region around the opening and said the response at the gallery stood out.

“It was incredible. The gallery is beautiful, the space is amazing, curatorial, they are just awesome,” he said. “The crowd was just fantastic. The response to the work was amazing.”

The exhibition attracted a packed house, with visitors filling several floors of the gallery during the opening event and talk.

According to Shields, the relationship with In The Pink began through a mutual friend. He said the gallery had collected his work previously through a Sotheby’s auction before the idea of a Portugal exhibition came together. Public biographies from Sotheby’s and his own website describe Shields as having become the youngest living artist to be in auction at Sotheby’s.

One of the new works shown in Loulé, Nine Lips, continues a motif that has appeared in his work over many years. Shields described it as part of a slow-moving photographic series that develops over time depending on the right subject.

The image was shot on a six-by-six film camera, a medium-format process that allows only a limited number of exposures.

“There are nine lips in the image and it was shot on a six-by-six film camera,” Shields said. “You get twelve shots on a roll. I took twelve shots and that was it.”

That emphasis on film remains central to how he talks about the work. Shields said that viewers can often assume the images are heavily edited due to current trends until they learn they were shot on film.

“When they find out, oh, this is on film and this is real, it becomes a different experience,” he said.

In an era when digital editing and artificial intelligence have become increasingly common in image-making, Shields believes the physical nature of film photography changes how audiences respond to the work.

His process, however, is not always predictable. Some photographs are planned over long periods, while others come together spontaneously.

“Sometimes somebody will call me at two o’clock in the morning after leaving a party and say, do you want to shoot right now? And I say, yep,” he said. “And then magic happens.”

Shields’ path into photography was not conventional. Before picking up a camera, he spent years involved in extreme sports. He began racing motorcycles as a child and later became a professional inline skater, winning a world championship at the age of 15.

His early creative work started with skate videos before moving into music videos and eventually photography in his early twenties. He has described himself as largely self-taught.

Looking back at his career, Shields said he does not think about individual photographs as defining his work. Instead, he views the entire body of work as the larger piece.

“What I always personally think about… is how are people going to look at this as a whole when I’m dead?” he said.

That perspective has even influenced how he plans future projects. Shields said he has already set aside images intended to be released after his death one day.

Outside photography, he is also expanding into filmmaking. Shields said he recently completed a 96-minute feature film that he wrote, directed, shot and edited himself.

He described it as “the first movie in history to shoot on every format of film.” Further production details will be publicly announced later in the year.

The Algarve exhibition may also mark the beginning of a longer connection with Portugal.

“We’re already talking about doing another show,” Shields said. “Lisbon would be amazing. Porto would be amazing. In The Pink is amazing.”

For now, the exhibition in Loulé offers Portuguese audiences a first opportunity to experience a body of work that continues to explore the tension between image-making and the physical reality behind the photograph.

Photos: Courtesy of In the Pink Gallery