Discovered at the end of the 90’s, Virxilio Vieitez’s work is that of a self-taught man who had been a public photographer in his native region of Terra de Montes, Galicia, Spain, from 1957 until his retirement in 1980.Devoid of artistic or sociological ambitions, his numerous portraits are rigorously composed: straight and frontal point of view, models in the center, rigid gestures, chosen settings and props.Nevertheless, rejecting the studio, he worked outside. Arguably, this paradoxical relationship with the conventions of staged portraits explains the strangeness of most of his photographs.