La Guareña, in the southeast of the province of Zamora, is a region tormented by time, where the risk of disappearance is beginning to erode its identity. In a rugged region where the wind blows and it hardly rains, the population is ageing with melancholy while the land is heading towards oblivion with no turning back. With an economy based on agriculture and livestock, there is no prospect of change. The comarca is the portrait of a hollowed-out Spain.
The project focused on a long-term personal account of the environment of the place where I grew up shows two types of photography, the portrait that shows the protagonists and the documentary landscape that is constructed as a symbiosis where the solarigraphs are the description of the passing of time, the sun in its daily course draws the arc of the clock that determines the end of the cycle, a hopeless sunset while the portraits treasure the last generation that will inhabit the area.
How do you photograph your world when all your reality has become stranger and tends to disappear? The guareña offers me an answer. Landscapes and portraits together capture a place unsettled by tension. The protagonists illuminated by a muted natural light like a persistent and imposing presence that imbues them with a palpable calm.
It is the vital iconic symbol of the precarious relationship with the earth and its metaphors.
Solarigraphy is a photographic concept and practice based on the observation of the sun's path in the sky (different in different places on earth) and its effect on the landscape, captured through a process that combines pinhole photography and digital processing. Invented around the year 2000, it uses undeveloped photographic paper, a pinhole camera and a scanner to create images that capture the daily path of the sun across the sky using very long exposure times, ranging from several hours to many months.
La Guareña
Azuzena retired you spend your last days in the town
La Guareña
Family Tumb Fuentelape a Zamora Solarigraphy
La Guareña
The lost pine tree Solarigraphy
La Guareña
My neighbor Juanmi After innumerable jobs from sports construction or jobs in the field or livestock he is a technician for the Fuentelape a town hall to carry out all kinds of maintenance
La Guareña
Asunci n Bragado Llamas to San Miguel de la Rivera La Aldea
La Guareña
Fuentelape a Solarigraphy
La Guareña
Fuentelape a Church Solarigraphy
La Guareña
Juaqui holding a rope in his garage in Fuentelape a with the solarigraphy of the town s Harinera Juaqui is about to retire he still keeps the tradition of having chickens and rabbits to raise them
La Guareña
Maria Antonia Roncero Mart n Live in La aldea
La Guareña
Fuentesauco Solarigraphy
La Guareña
Fuentelape a Bodega Solarigraphy
La Guareña
Miguel a native of Argujillo some days he goes to the bar El gato negro in the Village because all the social centers and bars have already disappeared in his town
