Editorial:
Partners:
Apocalipsis
Human mindlessness knows no limits. War, the systematic and continuous breach of human rights, is and always has been a constant throughout our history.
Six years ago I began a journey which I knew could never really end, a journey called Apocalypse; a blind wandering through the darkest side of ourselves. It was a journey in which my firm commitment was to show that reality that is so far from our world and that is yet such a substantial part of it.
Apocalypse does not aim to be a moralistic exhortation through the photography of our time. It is a real journey through the result of our acts as human beings in our most recent history. A decade in which we have witnessed, once more, how war, genocide and extermination have been justified in the name of God, under the banner of a new moral conscience or of simply achieving certain strategic objectives.
We seem to be bent on devaluing life until it is reduced to nothing. Iraq, Colombia, Darfur, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, Burma, are all the results of our decisions, and these are always made far from the victims who suffer their consequences. The world presented here runs parallel to our own, but is an integral part and direct result of the world we know and inhabit. The values that are so frequently called upon in our passionate defence seem to crumble away when they come to safeguarding a strategic interest or the over-riding value of an idea. This is a maxim that is repeated time and time again through history and shows us the dark side of the human condition.
Through the universal language of photography, Apocalypse seeks to confront us with the consequences of our decisions; to show us the orgy of desperation, blood and despair which human beings are capable of inflicting upon their fellows.
War, and the crazed stubbornness towards violence which seems so alien to us, steal dreams, legitimate hopes, life projects that do not differ much from our own.
This project aims at creating a small space in our collective memory; an ineluctable part of it are the episodes in our history that may not be forgotten if we are not to become accomplices in the impunity.
Our acts are the legacy that we leave to future generations. History has shown that human beings are capable of inconceivable cruelty but also of a nobility that we can scarcely imagine. The choice is still ours.
Bilbao, December 2009