INTRODUCTION

The ALBUFERA Natural Park , in Valencia (Spain) is formed by an extension of 21.000 hectares of sweet water and rice fields. The landscape offers a spectacle of changing light and endless plains.

PROJECT

SPECIES, is a sociological study where reality and fantasy get mixed. These images are meant to be the pages of a “Catalogue of Species from the Albufera Natural park”. They are not animal or vegetal species, but human ones.

I portrayed what I consider to be every representative group of that land. They all have something in common: They are inhabitants of this microclimate formed by water. Each group relates with this land in a particular way: protecting it, passing by, getting fed by it, exploiting it or simply giving to it their unearthly beauty as a present.

I make them float in the water like deities. In this way, I elevate the status of anonymous characters from rural Spain to divine levels.

The landscape acts as magic background: They belong to it and it belongs to them.

This series is the result of a trip to a place I didn’t know in advance. I convinced the different groups and individuals to participate in this surrealist portraiture adventure.

The waters are deep so, to be able to make the characters stand on water, I have to carefully place plastic boxes under the level of the water. Only this action makes the whole process an art performance.

The final portraits are in this project as important as the process itself. THE MAKING OF images, shown in exhibition often next with the final portraits, the “pages of human species” to highlight the idea of photography as an event.

The result are images which style is marked between social document (portrait of the deep rural Spain) and a social experiment.

Species represented in the catalogue are 17: The rice field workers, the unemployed men who spend their time fishing, the beauty queen, the duck hunters, the housewives, the fisherwomen, the firemen, the guards, the waiters, the bikers, the heavy metal local group, the boat man, the landowner, a young boy from the village, the artists and the police…

I develop in photography what I call “Antropología Fantástica”. I portrait in a documentary and theatrical style, people or groups with fantasy and dramatic elements. It is a photo-event in which the actors interpret themselves.

Other Antropología Fantastica projects are: Tribes, Equation, Reindeer-Man and

PORC-no-GRAPHIC.

LUCIA HERRERO