A photobook by Sara Fernández, Ana Fuente, Irene Natalia Álvarez, Pablo Vila, Amaiur Asurmendi, Klaudia Moles and Javier Lara.
See photobook in PDF Format.
STATMENT
The photobook that our team has been working on for the last few weeks (The Blue Era) is a descriptive photographic reportage composed of 17 pictures. Its aim is no other than to honor the collective memory of the Spanish citizens by merely portraying what they have been through during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. This artistic work attempts to showcase what life before the coronavirus used to be like while comparing it to the reality we face nowadays, leaving a sense of nostalgia in the reader. More specifically, and with the support of real testimonies, song lyrics and some other meaningful phrases, the photobook aspires to represent every change that the COVID-19 has brought about to our lives in a chronological order, be it the obligation to use masks, the emptiness of the streets or the inability to live our lives at the fullest.
We previously stated that this was a descriptive set of photographs, and this idea should be remarked, above all. Each of the pictures presented in the book describes reality and the feeling of sadness (hence its title, the term ‘blue’ being used as a reference to the social gloom and despair faced in the past year) that society has experienced just as it was. In this case, there is no argumentative approach nor room for any social demand. What is more, under no circumstances does the photobook mean to make any judgements about the measures taken by the governmental institutions nor to criticize the behavior that the Spanish citizens have adopted during these past months. Its aim, then, is to make art out of all the hardships that we have collectively been through; to give voice to those who have had to deal with such an anomalous situation and, more importantly, to put our feelings in paper so that future generations can live, through these photographs and the memories that these leave behind, the new reality we are all immersed in.
Image Theory 