Virgílio's primary interest has always been in portraiture, using it to create typologies. In 2000 he started a series called "We and Others", looking at groups of people living in contrary ways to the mass consumption society. Virgílio travelled across Europe and South America documenting this emerging global counterculture, mixing portraits with photographs of their homes and communities. Finished in 2004, "We and Others" has been exhibited at the Portuguese Center of photography, Photography Festival of Thessaloniki, Greece, the Pip Festival, China, the Círculo de Bellas Artes de Tenerife, Spain and Gallery Fnac, in Portugal, France and Spain.
In 2006 Virgílio was awarded an artist in residence scholarship by the Orient Foundation to pursue an individual project in Macau. Virgílio was particularly interested in Asia and its cities. Teeming with life and activity, the cities offered a dichotomy for Virgílio. What he found and saw was the opposite of an exciting urban landscape, but instead spaces that offered unprecedented solitude. Virgílio's response was to try and abandon the stillness of the portrait and look instead for the flow of reality made possible in street photography. The resulting project was Daily Pilgrims, in which Virgílio blurs his chosen subjects into the landscape as they appear to be swallowed up by the dazzle of the city lights.
Daily Pilgrims has been shown at the Museum of the Image, Braga, Portugal; the Aleppo Photography Festival, Syria; The Southeast Museum of Photography, Florida, USA; Portuguese Center of Photography; The 2nd Fotofestival Mannheim at the Wihelm Hack Museum, Germany; BAC Festival, Centre of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona, Spain; the Lodz Photography Festival, Poland; Photo LA and Photo Miami.
Virgílio's work is held in public collections including the Hahnemuhle Anniversary Collection, Alemanha; the Southeast Museum of Photography, USA; the National Collection of Photography, Portgual; Lodz Art Center, Poland and the University of Coimbra, Portugal.
Virgílio is currently teaching photography at the Polytechnic Institute of Porto and Portuguese Institute of Photography.
