PABLO CASTILLA
Costa Tropical
«For over two years I’ve been photographing the coastal region situated south of Granada -Andalusia, Spain- known as “Costa Tropical".
Motivated by wanderlust, I set out to explore this region with a medium format camera mounted on an unnecessarily heavy tripod. Two other conditions imposed themselves: every photograph had to be accessed by walking, and I would not know what I was going to photograph beforehand. By thoroughly exploring the surface of the landscape all I could expect at the end of the day was to have walked a new, unvisited portion of land and have witnessed the events occurring on it. Then, the photograph came along as a record.
Though I am originally from that region, what I saw seemed to emerge from a hidden, unseen and unparalleled reality. I began to consider that whole space around me as an unpredictable theater stage, where the landscape itself behaved as a décor, objects, architectural details and other urban elements as props, and people as performers or characters. Looking around me, many times it occurred to me that that flow of worldly events was coming right out of an unscripted piece.
With these series I’ve tried to produce an alternative imagery -non-related and autonomous from local history or personal biography - yet made up of the elements displayed on its surface. Many times I get the question whether I staged the images. The answer is no. The resulting images seem to inhabit a new and sovereign territory situated somewhere between reality and fiction, record and invention, document and subjective perception. And I’d like them to exist independently in that world.»
© Pablo Castilla