Proyects
When Carl Reavie and Lynton Davidson called me to photograph on Islay they didn’t know if it would work. They offered me a pair of wellies and with some oatmeal crackers and a piece of cheese we set off to find and photograph the twenty-two plants from which The Botanist gin is made. I traveled the island at different times of the year and my work there became a fundamental part of my professional activity for a few years.
This collection of photographs responds to the desire to put together all the trips I have made to sub-Saharan Africa since 2000. They are photographs taken in different formats, both digital and analogue. I have photographed in Cape Verde, Mozambique, South Africa, Uganda, Botswana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Senegal, Mali, Niger, Chad, Ethiopia.
It was born in parallel to the commissions I received from the magazine Paisajes desde el tren in which I had to photograph a dozen cities in Spain. At the same time that I was taking more main stream photos, I dedicated myself to shooting this collection of anti-postcards that, with a certain sense of humour, told a B-side of Spain those months.
I photographed the first one in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, in 2013. Since then I have been growing this mosaic of parks with the intention of composing a fictitious park made with pieces of parks from all over the world. Wherever you go, the same things are done in all the parks.
It is the result of touring the city of Bamako inside the car of the famous Malian singer Oumou Sangaré. Pushed by the times to return to the 35mm format. It arises from the fascination and perplexity of making sequences of moving photographs. Inside the vehicle, inside but outside the situation. A place reserved for the white photographer. Finished off in medium format with an exit from the city to Oumou’s birthplace under a miraculous rain.
