josef chladek

on photobooks and books

David Mocha - Bonavista, ediciones anómalas, 2015, Spain

Clothbound hardcover with dustjacket, edition of 300 copies.

Located in Spain, on the outskirts of the city of Tarragona, Bonavista is a neighborhood surrounded by factories, roads and wasteland. In the late 50s, migrants from Andalusia and Extremadura countryside settled in Catalonia to work in the fledgling industry. Bonavista is a place intimately linked to its origins in rural Spain and to the petrochemical industry, where its inhabitants have managed to forge a new territorial identity in a peripheral land devoid of discourse, providing positive values to their landscape and to the barren land where it sits. Beyond than depict the appearance of the neighborhood, I try to photograph some intangible values that exist in the landscape, related to identity, to work, or to the sense of belonging to a place. Moreover, the photographs are the result of my own experience in this place, it’s a look to the landscape where I grew up, the place where my grandparents arrived from Extremadura 50 years ago. Bonavista is a landscape shaped by the experiences and stories of their inhabitants, who found this land a place to live.

Order at Ediciones Anómalas.

Pages: 80
Place: Spain
Year: 2015
Publisher: ediciones anómalas
Size: 17 x 24 cm (approx.)