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Background information
"'Tierra' is the photographic project whereby Espe PONS invites us to delve deeper into memory, through places that have been marked by the trauma of the Spanish Civil War and the post-war repression of dissent. In the first instance, it takes us on a peripatetic journey in search of the poorly stitched seams of Spain, to those sites where the victims of political violence were buried in secrecy and treachery: graves in wide-open countryside, cemeteries, ditches, natural chasms, cliffs and beaches. At first glance, these spaces appear to be nondescript, seemingly unable to express their drama.
These photographs urge us to examine the surroundings we pass by every day, to see them in a way we have never done so before: as a repository of silent pain. And they also provide a continuity to the photographic discourse by Espe PONS, as she has spent several decades focussing on offering personal visions of what remains concealed, by means of insinuation and trust in the viewer’s interest. Now, with 'Tierra', she leads us to walk in a different way through the landscapes that surround us: with a fierce awareness of the tectonic shifts in our history and of their present-day aftershocks. The project includes 124 photographs." (© Carlos Martín)