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Tribes

Lucia Herrero

Published on 30/11/11

© Lucia Herrero

“Tribes” is a social ana­lysis, a raw por­trait of occi­dental soci­ety. Groups of fam­il­ies and friends set them­selves up by the sea equipped to spend a day in the sun. All this, har­mo­ni­ously jux­ta­posed, seems like a poem of cus­toms that reveal with humor, color and ten­der­ness, the pro­fund­ity of a whole soci­ety.
These pho­tos of modern-day beach groups are inspired on the stu­dio por­traits of ancient tribes who proudly posed in tra­di­tional cos­tumes next to their prized pos­ses­sions. The sky and the sea become the painted back­drop of the stu­dio and the sand seems as if sprinkled on the stu­dio floor. The light­ing and the the­at­ric­al­ity of the groups add an ele­ment of fantasy to the por­traits of real people in their nat­ural sur­round­ings. That enlight­ens a banal situ­ation and elev­ates it to a state of excep­tion. I call this way of social pho­to­graphy “Antro­po­lo­gía Fantástica”.
 (Lucia Herrero)

© Lucia Herrero

This series talk about human con­di­tion in a moment of peace­ful hol­i­day, their pride to be there, their hon­esty and vul­ner­ab­il­ity. The object­ively lim­ited sur­round­ing offers a com­plete extract of the essen­tial.
This por­trait of the “Span­ish Tra­gi­com­edy” is mean to have many dif­fer­ent inter­pret­a­tions. In one hand it talks about Occi­dental middle class, which suf­fer an iden­tity crisis cre­ated by the cur­rent eco­nom­ical situ­ation. These images make us won­der what changes and what remains after­wards. In another hand, they chal­lenge the beauty concept of today.
The pho­tos were taken along the Span­ish coast and people were asked to par­ti­cip­ate in.
Ten minutes for a flash­ing set up, bal­an­cing color, shapes and hier­arch­ies. All that gets dis­solved after­wards leav­ing as the only wit­ness a group por­trait, a poetic paint­ing… a human allegory.
I develop in pho­to­graphy what I call “Antro­po­lo­gía Fantástica”. I por­traits in a doc­u­ment­ary and the­at­rical style, people or groups with fantasy and dra­matic ele­ments. It is a photo-event in which the act­ors inter­pret themselves.

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