“Twenty Thousand New Homes”
Madrid 2013
This project was a documentary-based assignment from the university where I am currently studying a photographic degree.
My photographic approach bears strong influences by Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s approach to writing; the way in which he creates an alternative universe.
It’s this magic realism which I like to translate into my photographs. A Cinematic approach to photography, with the drama, the setting, the lighting.
I am also a strong believer in the way director Werner Herzog describes ‘static truth and fact truth’:
“Fact creates norms, and truth illumination: There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization.”
He also said that if facts were the most interesting thing about existence, phone directories would be the most interesting books.
I decided to approach the project as a paradox. The simplicity of angles and a poetic truth.
Technically, this meant pushing the film many stops, to create the sense of surrealism.
My name is Gage Solaguren.
I was born in the Basque Country forty-three years ago and I have been living in the UK for the last twenty.
