Down the Garden Path (ongoing)
Footsteps echo in the middle of the night, coming from the courtyard.
Awake, he sits up in bed and strains his ears. The dull beating of his heart prevents him from hearing clearly the danger that seems to be approaching. He suddenly thinks back to his neighbour, whom he saw yesterday and who warned him, because rumours were circulating about him again. He also thinks of his wife and his one-year-old little girl, who are sleeping alone upstairs. Of his rifle, placed a few centimetres from him, already loaded, ready to fire. He snaps out of his thoughts and starts listening again.
The noises have stopped. False alarm. A drop slides down the back of his neck.
Slowly, he lies back down in his makeshift bed. It won't be tonight.
Thus begins Down the Garden Path. With the story of Ramon, a young father with republican ideas at the dawn of Franco's dictatorship, sleeping in his cellar to avoid the murderous repression. A rifle at the foot of his bed, and a fist-sized hole, dug right next to the door so he could defend himself on the day the Falangistas came looking for him.
It is from this first image, drawn from his great-grandfather's testimony, that the artist weaves the web of a photographic investigation across the Galician territory. Consisting of an approach blending documentary and fiction, but also archives, texts and performance, his work takes the form of an exploration of the historical memory of Francoism. Down the Garden Path seeks to follow in the lineage of a collective body of work stemming from the Spanish antifascist struggle, more necessary than ever in the context of the fascistisation of late capitalism.
First Prize of the Prix Focale 2026
First Prize of the Prix Photoforum 2025