The images in Country Fictions are the result of a series of travels to different rural areas and scarcely populated regions of the Iberian Peninsula.

I started to work on this project in 2011, in a time when several close friends were thinking about moving to the countryside. In the aftermath of the great financial crisis most of us were in our 30’s and faced an uncertain future regarding our professional and personal lives. In this context I was confronted with the thought of leaving the city myself and starting a new life closer to nature.

Country Fictions is a way of dealing with the mixed feelings brought about by the idea of taking that big step. It has to do with “wanting to believe” in a better, simpler life.

The photographs in the project are a very subjective construction of a place somewhere between reality and my imagination. These images reveal a subtle visual tension between romanticism and a distant gaze, between a fragile beauty and a strong feeling of detachment. In a way, Country Fictions is an inner conflict expressed through photographs.

This project, as a collection of daydreams, also reflects on the language of photography itself, and how we are influenced by previous representations and preconceived ideas about rural utopias.

The illusion of escape from contemporary society, the myths and hopes built around nature, come together with the strangeness and the nostalgic look at a life that I might never live.

www.juanaballe.com/

Text: Juan Aballe

Voice: Marcus O'Donell

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Juan Aballe (Madrid, 1975) studied documentary and conceptual photography at the International Center of Photography (New York) and later obtained a Master in Photography at EFTI School (Madrid). His work has been exhibited and published internationally and he has received scholarships from institutions such as the Spanish Ministry of Culture, EFTI or the Botin Foundation. In 2014 he published his photobook Country Fictions (Fuego Books) and in 2021, Last Best Hope (Another Place Press).

In his work, Aballe explores the ambiguity and evocative nature of the photographic language to generate open narratives and question reality and fiction as absolute terms.

https://www.juanaballe.com/

Text: Juan Aballe

Voice: Marcus O'Donell

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I work without intellectualising anything I do, observing everything that happens and letting myself be guided by instinct. The first significant work was the Nameless Mountain. For ten days, I played with the light without looking for anything in particular, letting myself be surprised by each appearance. When the first mountain manifested itself, I felt that I transcended for an instant.

Since then, I have not stopped photographing inwards, aware that what I am is hidden and needs introspection to be understood. As the subjects appeared, I knew that I felt close to the horizon, the mountain, the rock, the sea, the cloud. Like little haikus to be read out of time, my voice emerges in the laboratory following the cadence of the chemical process. The contact with analogue techniques has given openness to my research so that I can force the concept of mimesis or representation of reality because I believe that beyond what we are able to see or recognise, there is something that deserves our silence. The photograph emerging under the red light reveals a state of being, a sacred moment that is worth disturbing through experimentation.

Photography is a mystery that teaches me the importance of having one's own gaze, which, in my case, goes beyond aesthetics. So, every image that emerges from the darkness is a question I ask myself to keep searching.

https://atelierkostenko.com/work

Texto: Viktor Kostenko

Voz: Ken Hunter

Foto: Martí Andiñach

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https://atelierkostenko.com/work

Texto: Viktor Kostenko

Voz: Ken Hunter

Foto: Martí Andiñach

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For years, I have been photographing the Altiplano, an area north of the province of Granada where paleontological and archaeological sites abound. It is fascinating to know that underneath this steppe-like and empty surface there are records of a past that we can only evoke today with our imagination: a blue lake, a mangrove

imagination: a blue lake, a herd of bovids, the trot of a group of wild horses, hyenas lurking behind the bushes, hominids butchering the carrion of a young mammoth... All that is gone, impossible to photograph, and yet, every time I have been exploring with the camera, I think what I am doing is satisfying a need to want to relate in some way to that past, that extinct universe. Yes, I would have liked to have been there.

Two million years ago was a long time ago. There are few certainties about what we know of that past, only hints. Prehistory is such an earlier time that it is almost fictitious; it is still full of mysteries, and we need an effort of the imagination to inhabit it. It could belong to the same realm as children's stories: "once upon a time, 2 million years ago...". A fairy tale is a magic bridge that we cross to visit impossible places, and this seems to me an interesting point from which to photograph.

What is photography's relationship with the occult, with what has already disappeared? In this project, I am confronted with the paradox of photographing something that is no longer there, and all that remains is reconstructing it through what is manifest on its surface. It is a game. The Altiplano is for me like a gigantic archaeological site where I can unearth the improbable traces of an extinct world.

https://www.pablocastilla.net/

Texto: Salvi Danés

Voz:Ken Hunter (AI)

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Pablo Castilla Heredia (Spain, 1980) lives and works between Granada and Norway. His work is based on the direct exploration of reality and encoded in a documentary-based language through various disciplines such as cinema, performing arts and photography. The use of a documentary style becomes in itself a strategy that reveals fissures in perception and challenges the boundaries between fiction and reality. After graduating in Fine Arts, he lived in Brussels from 2001 to 2014, where he earned a Master’s Degree in Documentary Film-making and, together with Hedvig Biong and Niko Hafkenscheid, founded “Kevin or Harry”, a performing arts collective that creates theater pieces where real people take the stage. Since 2018, he collaborates regularly with Pablo López on projects revolving around photography and territory (“Pangnirtung”).

https://www.pablocastilla.net/

Texto: Pablo Castilla

Voz: Isabel Hernández

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https://www.pablocastilla.net/

It is common for photographers to look for unpublished pictures in the most hidden places. Other times, we offer the possibility of first-hand access to a small and particular immediate environment. It is the essence of a personal and, at the same time, common experience, almost imperceptible because of its "domestic" character. These are moments of intimacy that, apparently, could be overlooked due to their lack of value but would otherwise go unnoticed.

The autobiographical side of my work as a photographer focuses on capturing intimate and personal moments in my life and those around me. I have documented moments of happiness, sadness, love and loss and have found that these moments can be shared with others in a way that transcends the personal.

Maregassa, a summer and maritime offshoot of Transmontanus, the project that gives its name to my first book published with Ediciones Anómalas, has done nothing but reaffirm that photography is a powerful tool for retaining memory and documenting the passage of time.

As an author, I have found a way to share my vision, explore universal themes, and witness how people and places change over time. I have observed how landscapes and cities transform, how people age and how memories fade over time. Photography has given me the opportunity to capture these moments and preserve them forever.

I try to offer a suspended time, parallel but universal and transferable. Relationships with loved ones in the territory. The Empordà coast is, in this case, one more member of the family. A particular setting and place. Sometimes, there is a connection between the landscape and nature itself as an endless cycle; other times, it is a simple game of significance for these members of my "family". The camera disappears and becomes an extension; it becomes congenital in this desire to seek and fix fleeting and meaningful moments of shared beauty. Reflections on immediate relationships, between time and space, between place and play.

Text: ©Salvi Danés

Voice: Ken Hunter (IA)

This audio is part of the Audioteca Fotográfica, a photographic sound archive that captures the gazes and reflections of those who get behind the camera.

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With a focus on questions of representation and subjectivity, Salvi Danés (b. 1985, Barcelona) employs a documentary approach, capturing the existing scenes he encounters, before playing with the diverse possible readings of the narratives depicted. He combines his personal projects with assignments and editorial orders. He works in photography teaching at various national visual arts schools.

Text: ©Salvi Danés

Voice: Ken Hunter (IA)

This audio is part of the Audioteca Fotográfica, a photographic sound archive that captures the gazes and reflections of those who get behind the camera.

(...)

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I think I have a lot of accumulated questions, and photography offers me a safe space for them to come out. I don't always find answers, but the important thing is that the pictures make me move forward. It allows me to get to know many people and places, which leads me to different experiences with which I can create something of my own. The most important thing is that it allows me to orientate my life by the simple fact of getting behind the camera. It has always been difficult for me to define my identity, but I feel that I can understand it better through this medium.

I'm only interested in reality as a starting point; what I find really interesting is the ability to call up things that are there but are not seen. I don't feel tied to any genre, but I know I'm very interested in authenticity in all its reflections. The truth is that I don't usually work in series because, for me, photographing is very emotional and intuitive. Although analysis helps me channel my vision to make good photographs, I need to feel connected to myself, linked to where I am or the person I am working with. Over the years, I have discovered one of my limits: I find it extremely difficult to maintain that feeling over time.

https://www.mariameco.com/about

Text: ©María Meco

Voice: Chloe Woodsl (IA)

This audio is part of the Audioteca Fotográfica, a photographic sound archive that captures the gazes and reflections of those who get behind the camera.

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Maria Meco is a UK based Spanish photographer working across multiple genres.

Having being shortlisted and interviewed for Portrait of Britain, Creative Review or Aesthetica Mag Maria's work is also being selected finalist for the Palm Photo Prize 2021.

"Her images sits somewhere between fiction and reality, and comes with a slightly haunting quality. Shape and shadow dance eerily in x-ray style images, or grainy black and white photographs of children and dogs that seem plucked from another time. Even the more overtly joyful moments she captures are imbued with a subtle nostalgia for lost summers."

Creative Review 2021

Maria is currently available in London and at times in Madrid, Spain.

https://www.mariameco.com/about

Text: ©María Meco

Voice: Chloe Woodsl (IA)

This audio is part of the Audioteca Fotográfica, a photographic sound archive that captures the gazes and reflections of those who get behind the camera.

(...)

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www.audiotecafotografica.com