Toni Blanco
The shadow of winter falls on the silence of the dead
"A few years ago, I was deeply excited to see" Dublin, "the latest John Huston film. It was based on a short story by James Joyce entitled" The Dead. "I felt completely identified with the characters in the story.
It will take about 6 or 7 years that by chance I discovered the town of Belchite among the semidesert plains that surround Los Monegros. It hit me in such a way, that since then I go to place two or three times a year. The first time I passed through those ruins I was frightened and confused. That mass of stones gave off such charm and energy, that my camera was firing again and again, until the reels worn over it. The destartalated churches gave off a nonhuman force, seemed to want to tear the clean sky in the morning. It was as if a huge overlapping cry was hidden from my eyes and struggled to emerge in the light of day. A feeling of anguish, waiting, wrapped everything around him.
It was a great time, it was summer, but the words of the end of the story of Joyce came to my head: "... the snow falls on the universe, the snow falls, like the descent of its last sunset, on all the alive ones and on the dead. "
I got back to the same feeling years later, one month of February when I met the valleys of La Garrotxa. Here, if the snow fell like in Ireland but the dead remained in Belchite.
The "see" the fall of a character's snow on Ireland's meadows turned into "I saw" falling snow over the fields closest to my existence, those that sowed corn in summer, now appeared desolate and white. the snow on the corn and the remains of the canyons nailed to the ground.
The image of a battlefield came to my mind alone. The destruction of life appeared in my memory together with the vision of the people of Belchite.
A landscape led me to another, both to the stories of Joyce, to the reflection on love. The solitude of the stones in my own solitude.
Belchite is a space that obliges you to reflect, which removes your bowels even if you are unable to think about their dead. The only corner not photographed by my camera is its cemetery, I respect it as a symbol or fruit of the sinrazón of man. On the other side of the walls rest the devastated buildings, that's where I feel at my feet. Over time things are going away, new ruins and mud clutches are formed. The town is dead but somehow I keep alive while its towers and bell towers keep standing. When they go down, it may be all at once forgotten, and perhaps it is then spoken of the place as a legendary paradise through which the sheep walked in the right direction.
I would not like to give a cold and calculated architectural image, perfect in its lines, of the whole. I would like to reflect that atmosphere out of time, which already pertains to history, to its own and tragic destiny, and to unite it with my own history and vision of the world:
It will take about 6 or 7 years that by chance I discovered the town of Belchite among the semidesert plains that surround Los Monegros. It hit me in such a way, that since then I go to place two or three times a year. The first time I passed through those ruins I was frightened and confused. That mass of stones gave off such charm and energy, that my camera was firing again and again, until the reels worn over it. The destartalated churches gave off a nonhuman force, seemed to want to tear the clean sky in the morning. It was as if a huge overlapping cry was hidden from my eyes and struggled to emerge in the light of day. A feeling of anguish, waiting, wrapped everything around him.
It was a great time, it was summer, but the words of the end of the story of Joyce came to my head: "... the snow falls on the universe, the snow falls, like the descent of its last sunset, on all the alive ones and on the dead. "
I got back to the same feeling years later, one month of February when I met the valleys of La Garrotxa. Here, if the snow fell like in Ireland but the dead remained in Belchite.
The "see" the fall of a character's snow on Ireland's meadows turned into "I saw" falling snow over the fields closest to my existence, those that sowed corn in summer, now appeared desolate and white. the snow on the corn and the remains of the canyons nailed to the ground.
The image of a battlefield came to my mind alone. The destruction of life appeared in my memory together with the vision of the people of Belchite.
A landscape led me to another, both to the stories of Joyce, to the reflection on love. The solitude of the stones in my own solitude.
Belchite is a space that obliges you to reflect, which removes your bowels even if you are unable to think about their dead. The only corner not photographed by my camera is its cemetery, I respect it as a symbol or fruit of the sinrazón of man. On the other side of the walls rest the devastated buildings, that's where I feel at my feet. Over time things are going away, new ruins and mud clutches are formed. The town is dead but somehow I keep alive while its towers and bell towers keep standing. When they go down, it may be all at once forgotten, and perhaps it is then spoken of the place as a legendary paradise through which the sheep walked in the right direction.
I would not like to give a cold and calculated architectural image, perfect in its lines, of the whole. I would like to reflect that atmosphere out of time, which already pertains to history, to its own and tragic destiny, and to unite it with my own history and vision of the world:
Two landscapes and a story interspersed at random and still today without knowing why
Toni Blanco