The door of the sun
Puerta del Sol, Gran Vía, Callao, Paseo de la Castellana, Moncloa, Plaza de Colón, Atocha roundabout, Bilbao... Not a single soul. Okay, yes. Just one. And it is not that the month of August has arrived and the Madrid diaspora has taken the highways towards the coast. No. It is that a year ago the creative director and photographer Ignacio Pereira took his obsession to portray people to the extreme, leaving them alone in the image, to look for frames where people did not appear. “I started little by little in a park and then I thought of taking this theme to the extreme. I started on the highways, with the entrance to the Burgos highway, the Coruña highway, and I reached Gran Vía and Puerta del Sol,” Pereira explains to Traveler.es. Thus the Madrid series was born.
To create these images, Pereira begins with a photo shoot in a place where movement is constant, with nothing standing still. "More or less 10 or 15 minutes is enough for everything in the image to have changed places," he calculates. In this way, between photo and photo things have varied and he can choose the empty places for each photo. With a combination of about 20 snapshots he manages to leave the photograph empty. “When I already have the photos, the editing begins: there are things that have to be repainted, there are elements that have not moved in all that time and they have to be painted by hand. For example, rebuilding a sidewalk, a traffic light…”
Paseo de la Castellana
To date, the Madrid series has 35 images. It is not closed, there will be more. Neither is the theme. “I am taking photos with the same spirit as the initials: no people come out and they are monumental sites. But there are new things that are quite shocking, ”he notes. It refers to locations. ** he is starting to bet on interiors. Any one in particular? The airport or the Atocha station **, he confesses. In addition, he plans to portray other European cities. “London, Paris…as far as it can go.”
In fact, in a year his series has undergone remarkable changes. “At first, I started in black and white. I wanted to give it that melancholy touch that you get with black and white. However, since there was no protagonist, no living element, the image became too cold” he points out. To give it more warmth, he decided to introduce color with a lot of saturation.
Gran Via
And the person? Yes Yes. That lonely soul that walks through the empty city immersed in his thoughts. He is in practically every picture from the very beginning. "It was like a wink, a funny gesture even thinking about the exhibitions to tell the little ones to find the person," says Pereira. Nevertheless, in the end it has been gaining in importance and the attitude of the protagonist has become more complex. "The scene itself is disturbing because it's quite mysterious and the fact that there is a person creates more mystery."
Puerta del Sol, Gran Vía and Plaza del Callao are the three most successful images. He keeps the one from Callao. “It's a different view from the one everyone sees from Gran Vía. It has a very wide vanishing point”.
Callao Square
During this year, Pereira, who has lived in Madrid all his life, has learned a lot about the city. “I have known places that I did not imagine, especially the rooftops. I have seen rooftops that are amazing. I always end up talking to the goalkeepers to be able to go up because I need those shots, ”he says.
The series of Madrid photographs can be visited in the studio that Ignacio Pereira has at calle Monteleón, 35 . You can request an appointment through the email or telephone number that appears on his website. Starting in May, all the material (plus some novelties) can be seen on display at the Volturno Cultural Space in Pozuelo de Alarcón. The limited edition, numbered and signed images are for sale in three formats: large (1.70 x 1.20 m) designed for companies with a price between 535 and 650 euros, medium (100 x 70 cm) for between 275 and 350 euros, and small (size of two A4) for 100 euros. They have already traveled to North Carolina! You can whet your appetite with these images that we show you. To be aware of all the news of the series, visit the Instagram account of its author.
Follow @mariasanzv
Moncloa
Bilbao Roundabout
Atocha Roundabout
Columbus Square