While in the south of Spain on an assignment, Markel Redondo noticed something strange about the buildings. It was 2009, just a year after the financial crisis had hit Spain, and a remarkable number of the houses, hotels, stadiums, and motorways were empty. They were the places that couldn’t survive after the financial collapse that rocked Spain, just like so many countries at the time. Markel says the idea for photographing these places in a series called “Sand Castles” came to him in the lyrics of a Jimi Hendrix’s song, “and so castles made of sand, fall in the sea, eventually.”
I knew the song from before but I heard it while driving in the car and it made perfect sense. For me these places represent the excess of contemporary Spain…and the result is these modern ruins, just like sand castles, that will eventually disappear.
Markel says he wasn’t really interested in taking photographs of people, but rather, of places that showed the actions of people. Photographing these deserted places was his way of showing the carelessness of the government and financial institutions that led to such desolation.
I was taking very static photos, with lots of empty space and distance in some frames with the idea of documenting these places with an anthropological eye, to keep a record for the future.
In creating “Sand Castles,” Markel spends a good amount of time finding locations to photograph. He does research, drives, and walks around. After that, he has to figure what time of day will be best for shooting each place. Markel says he waits for the “best moment and light,” sometimes returning to locations day after day to try different light. He also waits for longer stretches of time to see how buildings will age and change.
There is not much information about what is going to happen with these places so I have to go and look for myself.
Markel says the biggest challenge from the start was knowing that as a personal project, “Sand Castles” wasn’t sure to get published or exhibited. He had to commit to it with no certainty of the outcome. “It was a small risk but it gave me a lot of freedom as well,” he says.
Now, seven years from the start of the project, Markel says “Sand Castles” is getting great response from magazines, having been published all across Europe and the U.S. The series has also been exhibited in a number of photography festivals.
Markel will continue photographing these sand castles, revisiting them over the years to see how they progress. He doesn’t know what will become of the places, but he hopes that his documentation will serve as a reminder of what happened to Spain so that they can be careful it does not happen again.
Will they come back to life when there is more money? Will they be used in some other way? Will they be destroyed? Will they be left there like skeletons scattered across the country?
To view more of Markel’s work and to see the full “Sand Castles” gallery, visit markelredondo.com.