Absence (series, 2018)

Absence is a series about the two environments I grew up in at the same time and which forged my identity through their sense of belonging. My family’s land, in the Spanish Levante region, and my grandmother’s house in the city, located in the same region - the interior images are from the latter. The woman you can see in some of the photographs is my mother, who saw to the upkeep of the land on which she was born and which she would later inherit. I spent days and weeks growing up on this dry land, observing the results of human effort, what the land gave to the people who worked on it and what it kept from itself. The two properties were sold at the same time due to economic problems. This series speaks of loss, inheritance and effort, of absence and what prevails. It is not only the land or property that is inherited, but also the handing down of values and a sense of responsibility towards caring for the land and the environment we inhabit. These are rituals of work, odes to tillage and to the hands that plunge the hoe into the earth.