“Photography is essentially about the play of light and dark, illumination and shadow, much as the spiritual journey and our life pilgrimage are a practice of attending to these elements of our lives and how the holy is revealed in each."
— Christine Valters Paintner
Water, Wind, Earth & Fire
The photographs in this collection are drawn from two weeks in Andalucía, a special trip of sorts with my dear friend Lindsey. Full-colour versions, along with entries from my contemporaneous trip journal (lightly edited for organization, but otherwise preserved in their embarrassingly sincere, vulnerable entirety) are presented in the posts that follow. Almost from the moment I set foot in Málaga, I knew that I wanted to shoot a black/white project in southern Spain. Perhaps it was the visual impact of the place: the clarity of the Mediterranean sunlight that followed us the entire time, the interplay of geometric forms, strong architecture, narrow streets, light against grit and shadow. Perhaps it was the history of the place: deeply-woven, integral to the sense of being here, the centuries of culture and conquest bleeding into the present-day, imbuing it with a certain timelessness. Perhaps it was me, and the special significance of this trip for me. As soulful and restorative as my recent-year travels for landscape photography have been, these two weeks were something different, rejuvenating in another way entirely. The seemingly endless days - of sunlight, staying up late, strolling the streets, and relaxing in peaceful silence - brought me back to a younger moment in my life, when I was less concerned about creating than feeling, more fearless, more receptive to the world and the people around me. It brought me back to a past self that wandered the streets of Guadalajara, or the New York City boroughs, or San Francisco, or Ketchikan, with a tiny pocket camera, everywhere to love, and nothing to lose. For all these reasons, I wanted to try a style of photography that I haven’t seriously practiced since years ago in Baltimore (and perhaps it shows). I’ve organized this collection into four groups:
Street Photography: Architecture and street scenes both modern and old, from Málaga, Ronda, Seville, Córdoba, and Granada
The Albaicín: A special collection focused on Granada and the Albaicín; the place where I most felt the soul of Al-Andalus, such as it survives today
Humans of Al-Andalus: Photographs that take people as their main subject, myself and L included
Natural Forms: Expressions of beauty, man-made and otherwise
Enjoy. -J
“The streets are narrow, with strange broken stairways, undulating tentacles that twist and turn wearily, capriciously, reaching little viewpoints from which the vast snowy spines of the mountains are seen, or the splendid, definitive harmony of the plain. In some parts, the streets are strange pathways of fear and ominous disquiet, bound in walls blanketed with jasmine. We hear the barking of dogs, and distant voices calling someone in tones of hopeless sensuality… to traverse these streets is to observe fearful contrasts of mysticism and desire.”
—Federico García Lorca
Impresiones y Paisajes
“It is deep, truly deep, deeper than any well, deeper than the seas of the world, deeper even than the hearts of those that create it presently and the voices of those who sing it, because it is almost infinite. It comes from a faraway people, crossing beyond the cemetery of the years. It comes from the first tear and the first kiss.”
—Federico García Lorca
Granada, February 19th, 1922
“It is as if we are to learn that a clear and beautiful pattern in our own lives, once understood, can then be found clear and resurgent in the world. It is a portrait of the way our lives might be part of an enveloping life, the way the world might offer a common and beautiful unity.”
— Steven Nightingale
Granada: A Pomegranate in the Hand of God
