Archipelago by Yolanda del Amo

"Archipelago" explores the tension between the inner and exterior realities of human life. Yolanda del Amo's tableaus illustrate how closeness and separation coexist within the same space and reveal the fragile balance between connection and solitude.

Archipelago, a debut photobook by Yolanda del Amo, explores the tension between the inner and exterior realities of human life. Through staged tableaus featuring friends and family, Del Amo constructs moments that expose the social frameworks shaping identity, class, family, and gender. Her photographs illustrate how closeness and separation coexist within the same space and reveal the fragile balance between connection and solitude.

Photographed between 2004 and 2014, Archipelago was made with a large-format camera, using real interiors and outdoor locations in various countries including Spain and the United States. Her sitters are not professional actors but friends and relatives taking part in constructing scenes of imagined relationships. The result is a fusion of observation and design, where tension arises between authenticity and performance. Influenced by the dance theater of Pina Bausch, Del Amo brings the same precision to gesture and control that Bausch used to translate emotion into movement, shaping each photograph into an expressive study of human behavior.