Every week lots of volunteers of various ages and nationalities gather at the beach in Barcelona to collect the accumulated waste and prevent it from reaching the sea. At the end of the collection the garbage found is sorted and deposited in the different recycling bins.
They are normal people who devote their free time to a common good. They are contemporary heroes.
The pictures have been taken during some beach cleanups organised by Pure Clean Earth, No Mas Colillas En El Suelo, Yotuba.
Man is the only animal capable of transforming the environment that surrounds him.
In this project the attention is placed on the marine world, an environment that, due to lack of oxygen, man cannot colonize, but on which he still manages to act, with a mostly negative impact.
In every diptych, the absent man is present through his constructions and the remains of his daily activity, evident traces of his passage.
A bottle, a plastic teaspoon, a cotton swab, a micro-plastic, a fishing line, a balloon, and a cigarette butt are photographed exactly as they were found, as if they were the evidences of a crime, and represent some of the most common human footprints found on beaches, which end up contaminating the sea.
Every year 8.000.000 tons of plastic end up in the sea, killing more than 1.000.000 of marine animals and entering in the alimentary chain. If we keep producing plastic items, in 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in our oceans.
The items in the photographs are of daily use and have been found on a beach in Barcelona, Spain. I photographed them by reproducing the way they could have been originally presented and sold.
The human towers, called “Castells”, have been included in the UNESCO Lists of Intangible Cultural Heritage from 2010, as one of the still actual Catalan traditions. Spontaneous groups of "Castellers", citizen of all ages and genders, perform during local celebrations or dedicated competitions.
The colour of the shirt and the logo on the pocket identify the belonging to a specific team. The chain of arms at the base is the "pinya", the group that pushes toward the center to give support, strength and stability to the tower, but also to act as a "pillow" in case of fall.
The hands have a primary role in the execution: they sustain the tower, hold the companions, act as a support and a grip for climbing.
Participants of all ages and builds train during the entire year, reproducing precise patterns in which everyone plays a specific role and performs accurate, studied movements. The result is an example of discipline, courage, trust in companions and a sense of responsibility towards the group.
The "Castell" is usually composed by at least six levels, with men at the bottom, women in the middle and children at the top. One of the children has to raise his hand to indicate the completion of the tower, which can also reach nine or ten floors.
In a moment when the bread is more and more industrially made, frozen, carried to different shops where it's cooked and sold, we should support all the small realities that helps us appreciate the good, genuine bread made in the traditional way.
(@Cloudstreet Bakery, Barcelona)
