12-Llobregat07
The Llobregat 7, from the series The Llobregat
One of Spain’s primary rivers, the Llobregat has supported agrarian and industrial development in Catalonia for centuries. Around its delta, which enters the Mediterranean outside of Barcelona, are lagoons, dunes, wetlands and coastal pine groves. Protected areas, they are a resting and breeding ground for wildlife that provide nourishment for hundreds of species of fauna and flora.
I made the photographs in The Llobregat along the river in El Prat, Sant Boi and Cornellà. They are depictions of empty landscapes with muted palates that have more of an elegiac presence than a life-affirming one. As in all of my work, there are no people in the photographs. Instead, I invested the pylons—connected by cables in close-knit or extended groupings—with an anthropomorphic quality, converting them into portraits or metaphors for human presence. Simultaneously, the images convey a sense of unity between the pylons and trees, and a tenor of loss.
The Llobregat is part of Janelle Lynch: Barcelona (Radius Books, Fall 2013).