Photographer Tito Mouraz is back with a spooky series

In 2012, photographer Tito Mouraz took us deep down into the manmade, megalithic world of an industrial rock quarry, a project which took Tito a cool two years.

The photographer recently returned to our radar with another long-running project. Spanning five years this time, the series is titled The House of the Seven Women. In a mysterious artist’s statement, Tito writes: “It is still said around here that the house is haunted. At the house there lived seven women, all maiden sisters. One of them was a witch. On full moon nights, the ladies in their white garments would fly from the balcony to the leafy branches of the chestnut across the street. From there, they would seduce men who passed-by.”

The series, documented suitably spookily in black and white, captures Beira Alta, a former geographical area in the north of Portugal where Tito was born. “I started by doing some portraits of people. They interested me because they have always lived here and are attached to land just like trees. They speak about time, about their memories; their losses… many of them already dress in black,” Tito remarks. “This series gives an account of a persistent return to the same place, so as to scrutinise its differences – the slow deactivation of agricultural practices, the gradual transformation of the territory, ageing – in spite of listening to the same owl, to the same fox, to the same stories.”

Tito has now published the series in the form of a book.