Photobook reflections

I have been visiting the Pallars region in northwest Catalonia on a regular basis over the past ten years. During this time, I’ve built relationships, discovered countless places, and developed both an emotional connection and an understanding of a region full of signs of ancient lives and enigmatic remainings. Needless to say, I’ve taken countless pictures while immersing myself in books about the region’s history, customs, and traditions. At some point, I realized my images were forming something—but I wasn’t sure exactly what. So I began selecting them, printing them, laying them out on a table, and simply observing. As I moved and arranged them, a story began to emerge—a path, a journey of discovery. Each visit, each trip to the area, brought me closer to the history of these places. Slowly, an ancient meaning started to reveal itself... and I knew I wanted to turn it into a book.

What to tell

In some way, I wanted to convey my personal experience. The travels, the excursions, the conversations, the study of the environment and its history led me to discover a vanished world that, in some way, remains present if one observes closely. It is this immaterial presence what I wanted to transmit.

The images, they are the closest we will ever get to this collective imaginary. Emotion, interest, and love for these landscapes and these people will do the rest. And little by little, very slowly, a sense of belonging will begin to form—small, almost imperceptible, but deeply fulfilling.

Where am I?

The work is still in progress, there are some pictures that still need to be taken, and when done, see how the new images blend into the existing body of the book. Time is important, helps ideas fall into place and if I could succeed in conveying my message to just a few people, I would feel like I’ve accomplished something.

The goal

My goal was to convey an immaterial presence—to highlight the lives of those who once inhabited these places through their remains. I wanted to do it through my own process of discovery, moving from the landscape to the object, gathering key elements of human transformation—places that were once lived in, churches, houses, villages, factories and tools they were once used. By zooming in on these remnants, I attempt to see what they saw, feel what they felt, and understand the reasons behind what they built—their beauty, their purpose.

Then I thought about keywords that could relate to my goal; paradise, vastness, mystery, fear, effort, beauty. The story follows my own process of discovery and had to find a specific way to combine texts and images to create the right effect, ultimately, able to convey the message.

Structure

But one thing is wanting to create a photobook, and another very different thing is actually making it, especially if you want to go beyond just compiling a collection of pictures in book form. That’s when you start considering how to build the message, what techniques to use, and how to leverage text and images effectively.

It was then that I started reading about photobooks, studying the ones I had, and considering the different aspects I could take into account for creating my own. I had always been interested in the theory of the image, from thinkers like Susan Sontag, Roland Barthes, and Walter Benjamin to more contemporary voices such as Bettina Lockemann, Gerry Badger, and Antonio Ansón.