Iphone pictures from my evening walk around one of the most turist areas near Valencia few years ago. The fishermen changed their boats by bars and motels. Now there is no fishing, neither the seas, nor the bars.

Someone might wonder if this is the recurring situation of crisis. Or perhaps we are, stubborn people, who insist.

 Link to the gallery

© text and images Jose Martinez

I come from the rice fields and I wear sandals of esparto grass. Mangroves and unstable terrain are my native environment. I can't hide it, nor want to. I am not a writer, not a photographer. I travel because it is my work, and because it drives away the demons I have inside.

I've been editing a new series of photographs for a few months. I recognize that has puzzled me. It’s unusual for my way of seeing things, but this time I did not know how to give literary form to the fraying content of the pieces of daily life that I captured around Istanbul. There is not something unique, in fact. Surely these characters roaming ports, parks and city suburbs of the ‘Two Continents’ will continue in the same fears and joys, unconscious of my remote purposes. Very fleeting here.

I couldn't help but remember those small towns where I skipped stones on the lagoons, when I was reviewing each of the thousands of photographs in this series (My hands were pale, and the curious neighbors whined their concern to my parents, guessing what strange illness I contracted at birth). Drawing Valencia’s Albufera lagoon and laborious fishermen thirty years ago, I can still see the sketches and small spaces occupied by tiny inhabitants. As glittering tinplate, these mysterious strangers crossed infinite bridges over the Bosphorus Strait.

I’ve been there, curious, twice. But I don't remember what happened to me. I have not retained my feelings in my memory, nor my actions during that childhood so far away; can’t even maintain my focus when I photograph, because I end up losing myself, becoming a madman through those abysmal lenses. What it creates: a changing amplitude, which consumes my attention and requires everything of me. It's the metamorphosis of mankind, incessant, that moves the earth with slight but effective impulses.

Diversity tends  to disappear, my  friend. The homogeneity of  humanity burns in a blaze of dazzling colors, as attractive as poisonous. The richness of ancient customs is now a ghostly curiosity. We are proud to see ourselves as disposable; combustible. Crackling leaves. 

We are embers willing to glow. Coals of what existed for so many years. Burning and burning.

© Text and Images by José Martínez

by a better brain, the past would not be so seductive."

(Transparent things by Vladimir V. Nabokov)

I'm sitting on the edge of the cliff. Iʼve left cameras, tripod and bag on a granite boulder. Staring into the abyss, my mind is blank, with no more concern than to pass the time. I started my walk at dawn from the nearest town (Vielha) and after four hours of walking along winding trails I reached this rocky minaret while the sun began to emerge between the tops of Puigcerdá, next to the Andorran border.

The morning mist embraces these endless valleys that collect precious water, like blood leaking from the wounds of these magnificent hills. The light, warm and distorted, begins to dissolve the lazy mist, and I know it's time to photograph this unique spectacle. But I remain still, receiving glittering rays, staring over the horizon, remembering, inventing memories.

The flap of an eagle starting to fly is the first sign of life lurking. I have heard that flutter before and my meditations roll back to a time in the past. Lying on thick grass, on the sloping moors of my childhood, listening to the whistle of the warm spring wind. And the screaming of other children at school. I can still hear that sound of children, far away.

The eagle crosses back across the mirror in which Iʼm immersed, and I decide to fly away too. The colors are tight and insects move the tiny, flexible grassy stems. I'm going to photograph, I muse, the smallest details that I find in the margins of the trail. I pick up the photographic equipment and dive into the freshness of the forest, conquering oblique light shafts that slip between the branches. Splendid scenarios reveal themselves. I start shooting while walking and feel happy, overly happy, and a little crazy.

Link to the gallery: Sounds of Grass

© Text & Images: Jose Martinez, all rights reserved

Those pictures were taken in Sant Feliu de Guixols during a break on my recent trip to the Pyrenees. It was a warm and windy day with two sounds flying in the air: The squawking of the cormorants and the whistle of the boats entering to the harbor.

 Camera Canon 1D Mark IV with the 24-70 mm lens switched

Full version of the pictures in my Black & White Gallery, Also in the Portfolio page.

© Jose Martinez