Comic book heroes on azulejos, modern Lisbon

by Rob Rollenberg

Azulejos, the painted tiles, can be found everywhere in Lisbon — usually in blue and white, depicting saints and naval heroes. This wall is proof that this centuries-old tradition is still very much alive: a huge tiled mural by the Icelandic artist Erró, covered in comic-book characters. Superman, The Flash and dozens of others, all on classic Portuguese tiles.

The wall runs alongside a flight of stairs in the modern part of Lisbon, with a sleek glass façade behind it. For me, that contrast was the photo: hundreds of years of tile-making tradition, twentieth-century comic-book heroes and twenty-first-century architecture all in a single image. I deliberately kept the concrete pillar on the right and the glass façade on the left within the frame, so that the explosion of colour from the tiles is sandwiched between them.

There was little need for post-processing — the colours were already there in the tiles; I simply toned down the glass of the façade slightly so that it doesn’t draw too much attention to itself. A photo for anyone who loves Lisbon but also loves comics. Or the other way round — that works too.