¡WHAT A LAUGH, THEY ALL CRY!

  • Dates
    2019 - 2020
  • Author
  • Topics Portrait, Street Photography, Documentary
  • Location Madrid, Spain

A family, an extreme coexistence, a story as traditional as it is fascinating.

Three Sisters: a drug-dealer trapped in her 2010 parking-lot party days, a naturist obsessed with personal hygiene and sharks, and a young woman enthralled with Victorian society.

A mother of psychotic about health and cleanliness who dreams of being Joan Crawford, and a rural, punk aunt who shelters them in their village when they need it.

A family, an extreme coexistence, a story as traditional as it is fascinating.

© Manuela Lorente - Image from the ¡WHAT A LAUGH, THEY ALL CRY! photography project
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1_Camila. Camila is an anarchic and rebellious girl by nature, an eternal adolescent. During the last years of the 2000s, the so-called pokeros and the parking culture took over the suburbs of Madrid, bringing with it the aesthetics of fluorine colours, animal prints, and over-the-top makeup. Camila has settled in that era forever. She dresses the same and sleeps with the same men in her mother's garage since those years. Although in spring and summer she will also resort to the shared garden. She roams the streets dressed in a semi-glossy leopard robe and a shopping cart that she holds on to with huge fingernails that change colour and length from one week to the next. The original gloss of the robe started to fade due to wear and tear, like Camila herself, who is closer to being a Foreign Minister than the moral role model in a volunteer group. But under that image of a single mother, lost and hooked on boxed wine and painkillers, the new mind of the shadow economy lies hidden, because nobody suspects that there is never food in her shopping cart, but rather psychotropic drugs. Camila; the camel. 
Now with COVID, business is stagnant, and although she remains in the supermarket with her customers, orders are few and far between. She has set up an erotic broadcasting station with an antenna stolen from a scrap dealer's truck and now spends half her time at the pharmacy, not only buying haemorrhoid cream to which she is addicted, also finding out how to create her own drug with medication she has at home. She has already saved several tutorial videos on YouTube to learn how to do it.

© Manuela Lorente - Image from the ¡WHAT A LAUGH, THEY ALL CRY! photography project
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2_Manoli. Manoli is an anachronism. The lace on her clothes, the pearls (which she found in a stolen fake mink coat she bought at a flea market) and the earrings with Catholic motifs with sticker gemstones place the date of Manoli's birth closer to the first half of the 20th century than what it really is. She is a conservative person. She dreams of having a good husband, good jewellery, and a nostalgic store where she can sell pretentious antiques that make her appear like a cultured and well-positioned person. She is obsessed with marriage and complying with the social pattern of the Victorian era, but is so narcissistic that living with her is unbearable. That is why she has used the virus to justify breaking off her engagement, which actually happened a year ago when Juan (her ex-fiancé) discovered that Manoli was stealing saints from the neighbourhood parishes to sell them for wallapop after one month of engagement and two weeks of courtship. Since then, she has been walking around the house day after day with the wedding dress that she took from an elderly neighbour after her death and from the window of her house she shouts at anyone who leaves their home, saying "Where are you going, you will regret it in purgatory." Of course, like all moralists, Manoli will points a finger from home and minutes later do the same thing, while expecting applause and cries of encouragement from everyone. And what is she going to do? As a religious person, she has no personal life and spends her days recreating how she and Juan spent almost two months of pure and chaste love.

© Manuela Lorente - Image from the ¡WHAT A LAUGH, THEY ALL CRY! photography project
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3_Leire. Since she was a child, she has been obsessed with water and sharks, ever since she saw Spielberg's movie in a summer theatre in the 90s and spent her mornings on the beach imagining the massive attacks while the ghost of a smile could be seen on her face. At that time, Manoli once found her wearing diving goggles and a swimsuit, fleeing from home at dawn to seek a future at sea which would be more in line with her expectations. She also spends half the day in the shower, standing under the shower head an average of five times a day. What happens when she is in the shower only she knows, but she usually walks around the house with crazy hairstyles which she achieves by mixing private label dyes and shampoo. Singling along to songs by Meat Loaf blasting out from her speakers. She can also be found lost in her own camping scenery in her room, smoking a joint in the pretend ecosystem. Being high adds credibility to an experience that requires a great degree of environmental imagination. It is her way of escaping, what unites her to Camila, who in these pandemic times spends a lot of time abstracting from reality with her, high on cannabis and listening to white forest noise playing from a mobile app behind the tent. Camila and Leire understand each other and will end up spending their old age in the same psychiatric hospital. Leire found out about Camila's plan to rob the pharmacy, and even though she is normally law-abiding, she is going to run out of tryptizol and cannot live without anti-anxiety medication. She has gone to half the pharmacies in the city by bus, with a forged work certificate made in paint and skipping all quarantine protocols. But without a prescription, anti-anxiety medication is impossible to obtain and all she has managed is a series of disputes. One of the pharmacies gave her the number of an addiction clinic to which they supplied drugs.

© Manuela Lorente - Image from the ¡WHAT A LAUGH, THEY ALL CRY! photography project
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4_Carmela. After this sweep, it is evident that Carmela has long pressed the mute button and that she lives in a sensitive parallel universe in which her daughters do not exist, make no sound, and do not breathe, despite living under the same roof. Doing this for Carmela is relatively simple, she is an obsessive person who puts all her effort into her work. When she was young, she worked sporadically disinfecting clinical spaces to earn a little money (they paid very well because they gave her a risk bonus) and that led to her become obsessed with cleaning and disinfection. Every morning when Carmela gets up she soaks a cloth in water and bleach and goes over the entire house, from the doorknobs to the plant leaves, which one never knows where they come from. On occasion, Manoli has even seen her washing her hands with diluted bleach and smelling them for hours. Carmela dreams of the eccentricities of the Golden Age of Hollywood and those actresses who embodied ostentation and feminine power, that's why she plays miniature golf at home and that's why she does it in high heels and with saturated colourful velvet clothes. But that's only on her breaks. At other times, she designs hats for the neighbours and for small local boutiques and while the neighbours come to try on the hats in gowns and curlers, she imagines that she is dressing Joan Crawford for the nominees breakfast of the golden globes. Currently with Corona, Carmela is becoming closer to her daughters, as she is forced to share so much time with them it softens her heart. But there is also Margarita, her sister, who has been a widow for some years. As she was afraid that Margarita's isolation would end badly, she decided to take her home. They have no more family and funerals are very expensive.

© Manuela Lorente - Image from the ¡WHAT A LAUGH, THEY ALL CRY! photography project
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5_Margarita. Margarita, unlike Carmela, decided to stay in town and live the folksy life. In the town they have conservative customs and strong beliefs, so Margarita married Manolete, who was the son of the owner of the cement factory in the region. A marriage for money. But even the best stories go wrong, and a few years later Manolete died and Margarita fell into a depression that led her to lock herself up in her huge farmhouse, rosary in hand, entrusting herself to the Virgen del Camino, patron saint of her town. As a good village girl, Margarita knows the proverb as well as her own mother tongue and could have a scientific debate using only popular phrases such as "God is the one who cures and the doctor collects the bill" or "Year of acorns, snow to the balls." Margarita's country punk twist to the proverb as well as her rural ways help the girls feel closer to her. She, being a widow and having no descendants, enjoys their vitality, especially Leyre, who discovered her taste for the mountains and the countryside by spending time at Margarita's house. That is where they used to go for walks in the mountains, picking flowers and making ashtrays for the neighbours with cement from Manolete's inheritance. Margarita's quarantine is an uphill struggle. She has realized that entrusting herself to God is not enough to kill boredom, so Leire has taught her the effectiveness of marijuana infusions. Of course, she thinks it's a mix of roses, pennyroyal, and mint. Since then, it is often heard how the rosary falls from her hands when she prays in the hallway.

© Manuela Lorente - Image from the ¡WHAT A LAUGH, THEY ALL CRY! photography project
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6_House exterior. - Do you know how rare the dead are? - Everything? - How perfect they seem. When I die, I want to be in an uproar. That's life. Chaos.

© Manuela Lorente - Image from the ¡WHAT A LAUGH, THEY ALL CRY! photography project
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7_Breakfast at home. - We started well ... Just when I have so much fuss in my head ... - Your head does not fit so much! - Hey, I'm hungry ...

© Manuela Lorente - Image from the ¡WHAT A LAUGH, THEY ALL CRY! photography project
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8_ Carmela vacuuming. - A vacation is good for us. Our body needs to eliminate toxins, tomorrow I plan to spend it naked all day. You sign up?

© Manuela Lorente - 9_Carmela's room. - Mom ... Mom ... Mom ...!,! Can't you hear the phone ?! - If it's your father, tell him to go to hell!
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9_Carmela's room. - Mom ... Mom ... Mom ...!,! Can't you hear the phone ?! - If it's your father, tell him to go to hell!

© Manuela Lorente - Image from the ¡WHAT A LAUGH, THEY ALL CRY! photography project
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10_Leire and Camila's bathroom. - Turn off that thing now! -This girl has the devils in her body ... - Why do you condemn us to endure that damn song 24 hours a day ?!

© Manuela Lorente - Image from the ¡WHAT A LAUGH, THEY ALL CRY! photography project
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11_Margarita praying. - All those negative ideas, where do they spring from? Don't you eat fruit or what? Are you getting into the dark side and feel very old and radical?

© Manuela Lorente - 12_Leire's tent. - People have prejudices about what I do. - People can be a shitty moralist.
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12_Leire's tent. - People have prejudices about what I do. - People can be a shitty moralist.

© Manuela Lorente - Image from the ¡WHAT A LAUGH, THEY ALL CRY! photography project
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13_Margarita preparing food. - His name is Bernie, he's a lawyer and he has a dog. He is someone to do things with. - If all you can say is that he is someone with whom doing things is worse than being alone.

© Manuela Lorente - Image from the ¡WHAT A LAUGH, THEY ALL CRY! photography project
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14_Carmela exercising while Manoli yells at her. - I need freedom, I suffocate in this house with all of you! - Well, you won't be able to have it! I'm supporting you and you don't have freedom when they keep you!

© Manuela Lorente - Image from the ¡WHAT A LAUGH, THEY ALL CRY! photography project
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15_Camila talking. - Fantasizing about making love to you is better than real sex with most people. What are you wearing? - At this time ? Nothing...

© Manuela Lorente - Image from the ¡WHAT A LAUGH, THEY ALL CRY! photography project
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16_Leire's plants. - But what will mothers know! - What will mothers know !? What will mothers know !? Mothers know everything!

© Manuela Lorente - Image from the ¡WHAT A LAUGH, THEY ALL CRY! photography project
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17_Manoli talking to Leire. - I spent a lot of time in my room fantasizing that my pillow was my husband ... I would start kissing my pillow and then I would tell him that I had gone to the doctor and that maybe I was pregnant … - Being you as you are, why do I have to go to the psychiatrist?

© Manuela Lorente - Image from the ¡WHAT A LAUGH, THEY ALL CRY! photography project
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18_Carmela playing miniature golf. - Do you dream of me too? - Yes, many times ... But they are other types of dreams, you get a heart attack or accidentally crush you with the car.

© Manuela Lorente - Image from the ¡WHAT A LAUGH, THEY ALL CRY! photography project
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19_Margarita resting while praying. - Have you been to the Prado Museum? Have you seen Goya's black paintings. Well, I see the world now and what I see are those paintings. - Come on, come on, Margarita ... it won't be so bad ... Come on, let's go to the roof to see what the nuns are cooking!

© Manuela Lorente - Image from the ¡WHAT A LAUGH, THEY ALL CRY! photography project
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20_Camila in Leire's tent. - I cannot continue with this myth of the family or the love between sisters, we are people accidentally united by genetics, a random selection of cells. - Since when have you become so cynical?

© Manuela Lorente - Image from the ¡WHAT A LAUGH, THEY ALL CRY! photography project
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21_Rubbish. - You have the ability to form a storm with a completely innocent misunderstanding! - Innocent did you say? Many were hanged for less.

© Manuela Lorente - Image from the ¡WHAT A LAUGH, THEY ALL CRY! photography project
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22_Camila provoking - I’m not tense! Are you tense ?! - Yes, I'm tense because I feel you tense! - You're tense, you're tense ... - God what a bore!

© Manuela Lorente - 23_Leire's interior tent.
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23_Leire's interior tent.

© Manuela Lorente - 24_End. - Hello girls, we are home! - Who is it? - Who is it? Who will it be?...The Pope...
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24_End. - Hello girls, we are home! - Who is it? - Who is it? Who will it be?...The Pope...

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