El Clot [2013/2018]

  • Dates
    2013 - 2018
  • Author
  • Topics Portrait, Social Issues, Documentary
  • Location Valencia, Spain

El Clot (The Hole), is an apartment block in Valencia's historic El Cabanyal neighborhood which has been under threat of demolition for 20 years. Gypsy families have occupied and restored some of the empty apartments in El Clot, where they live in poverty and under threat from law enforcement.

El Clot neighborhood has virtually disappeared, with the only remains left standing on the dockworkers' block. Its inhabitants are invisible, mostly gypsy families who have occupied the abandoned apartments in the building.

Gypsies belong to Spain's largest ethnic minority, a minority that is very heavily socially stereotyped and according to various surveys, also the group most harshly rejected by mainstream society.

This work is a reflection, a way to explore the world and understand it. I am interested in the individual, their face and architectural environment. I have always worked with human beings, with people as photographic object, real people and their real situations, trying to understand them and developing relationships with my subjects over time.

I seek an unbreakable but intimate portrait, direct but sensitive, objectively powerful but full of personal emotion, the product of commitment to people and their environment, trying to represent both their strength and vulnerability.

Although El Clot is a slum I have not encountered either rejection or pain. They are, in short, impoverished but also happy people, even openly proud. I want to show how they live, trying to turn this work into an affirmation of the dignity and humanity that is in all people, and trying to capture in pictures the wild vitality and hope of this community.

Present in the background there are, however, more ambitious objectives: methodically documenting all aspects of gypsy culture, its territory and its people, becoming a work about their identity.

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