Mendebalde (Western) / 2018
The main facade of the Basque farm house is usually pointed to the east or the southeast so that they can make the most of the sunlight. However, the back part is normally pointed to the west, where the bad weather and the wind pound. In this series of photographs, I have only photographed the western facade as those walls sculpted by the rain, the wind and, after all, the passing of time, seem to be very intriguing to me.
Our generation lives with the urgency of supplying documentary evidence of traditions, professions, languages or architectural forms. The traditional farm houses in the Basque Country are one of those things in risk of becoming extinct and in the last few decades many have paid attention to it in order to preserve all the wisdom this kind of architecture contains.
Owing to all this documentation, we have built in our collective imaginary a particular image of the farm house, it corresponding to the front facade with its windows, balconies and lovely arcades. Therefore, what we can see in these photographs doesn’t correspond to what we have in our minds. This is exactly where I have wanted to position this series of photographs, in that space of collision between reality and perception.