Wastelands

Wastelands deals with young representation and aims to be a portrait of a–my generation. I am interested in a type of changing subject, in movement, without a defined identity, and the spaces that surround them.

Since 2020, I have been trying to represent people similar to me and our reality as young Spanish people in suburban Madrid. Growing up in Tres Cantos, a small town in the greater Madrid area, I found that these spaces lack a clear identity, being neither city nor landscape. They seem isolated from any narration, much like photographs, lost in an instant and removed from any before or after. I believe this mirrors how many people around me, and myself, feel–caught in a state of limbo, of uncertainty.

In the case of young generations, similar to wastelands that are empty holes in cities, the institutions abandon us and there is a gloomy uncertainty about our future. During my time in Montreal, I realized that I wanted to continue "Wastelands" from a wider point of view: not only about Spanish young people, but about a portrait of a–my generation.

The project consists of a series of portraits of young people. I choose spaces to take my portraits with neutral backgrounds, and I remove any objects and furniture from the frame. By isolating the subject, reducing all the information of the background and taking the person out of their context, I draw more attention to the bodies, the gestures, the poses and the gazes.

These portraits mirror how many people around me, of my generation, feel–caught in a state of waiting, of limbo, of uncertainty. In our generation concepts like gender are no longer understood as a binary space, but rather as "terrain vague".

After taking mostly individual portraits for the last years, I became interested in exploring the dynamics between different subjects within a single frame. I noticed that I was indirectly creating a network of people, a community. I found the idea of bringing together several members of that community in the same frame intriguing. First inspiration I had when thinking about group portraits was sport teams photographs. They are normally located in a gym or training space and depict a team of a sport. All of the team members are wearing the team uniform and appear forming two lines or more and looking straight to the camera. Light is normally direct and not too harsh, using both natural light or artificial. After taking some images of real sport teams at the places they meet up to train, I realized that I wanted to rethink about this specific type of portrait. I took the photographs in a de-contextualized location where the individuals are not wearing uniforms and it is unclear what binds them together.