roads to nowhere
Lucia, when was the last time you felt great about a photo you’d taken?
° I hesitated, for too long. My friend Jero then rephrased and asked:
-Where do you go? What is the place where you can find your photos?
° I didn’t think about it, I just replied without blinking: The road.
It was February 2020, a week later lockdown became the new normal, and the cameras started collecting dust. Almost 5 months later, the first day we were allowed to return to the streets, I grabbed two cameras, the expired film I had in the fridge, and the car keys. Went out without a plan. I only used one camera.
From that day on, these day trips became a routine to get lost and find myself at least twice a month. The project went on for 18 months.
Roads to Nowhere is a photographic exploration of backroads in the Spanish countryside where the only thing that lingers on abandoned transit stations and rest stops is the photographer's gaze.
Four chapters responding to nature's cycle. Each is composed of 12 images, the number of frames exposed in a 120 film roll when used in a Hasselblad 501.
No defined route.
Hasselblad 501 exclusive.
Kodak Portra 400, except 3 rolls of Kodak Portra 160.
Limited to the roads in the Comunidad de Madrid, at the beginning these were the limits due to Covid restrictions. Later I decided to keep it that way.
Only one frame per photo, if I had it… great, if not… tough luck.
It was only when Jero asked that I realized my interest in the road as a subject, as the place where I felt connected to something. It had always been there, the keen interest in road trip movies, the Beat generation readings, Wenders and Müller as references, I just hadn’t added two plus two.
