NEW NEIGHBORS SERIES © 2004 - 2014
New Neighbors Series could be considered my journey throughout various cities during the last decade. Instead of recording different landscapes and open spaces, I try to privilege the people I met along my way and had established a special connection with. Portrayed in their intimacy, subjects reveal the nature of the shoot. I can tell something else about myself. By depicting some melancholy or bitterness these photographs can also be interpreted as a subtle emotional unveiling of a hidden cultural layering from the inner walls of a big city.
I felt the challenge that implies live in a new country or move into a new city hoping that moment when you can finally find a place to call home. I discovered that is a very common thing for most people, specially in the context of the current economic crisis, the fact to get used to be ready to move to a new place quite often. Crisis doesn't discriminate if you're young or old, healthy or ill. Most of these visual references are all about the relationship we develop with –or against– the places we live in. It’s all about intimacy, loneliness, silent moments when nothing remarkable happens, a candid instant. But it’s also about how exposed we feel even in our 'own' place and how fragile we are as individuals within this society; and how can we read our belongings and how we use space throughout the appearance of one single temporary room. These images can also be taken as a social mirror, a personal projection, since most of them are either immigrants –like me– such as students, embryonic families or established couples, all temporarily living in a provisional housing or in a short-term relationship. The moments of quiet observation I've spent made me considered them as ‘my neighbors’ even though I know they aren’t for real.