Absence
This series of photographs is about the land in the south of Spain and about my family’s land in particular, farmland that my mother inherited after my grandparents’ deaths. She devoted herself to its maintenance up until the day she had to sell the property. Spain has not really recovered from the economic crash of 2007, especially in rural areas of the south.
The land had belonged to my family since 1920. I spent many days and weeks on this land growing up, watching what could come from human effort, and what the land gave, and what it withheld from the people who worked it.
The series of images speak of heritage, roots, and remembrance; presence and absence; and what remains. My hope is that people will come to care for this land as my grandparents did.
Romina Belda (Spain, b. 1990) is a London based photographer and mixed media artist. Her work shows a direct influence from poetry yet cinema and her photographs explore topics of identity and heritage.
Romina’s practice is based on the politics of space and people under the prism of socio-anthropology. She finds in the ordinary the source of all meaning and her subject matter is a result of a triggered emotion linked with her memory. She works under a methodology of personal observation positioning.
Romina has participated in residencies in Spain and Greece. Last summer at The Skopelos Foundation for the Arts together with performance artist Nasia Papavasiliou created a collaborative project in the form of video installations about human intervention in land decay.
The next exhibition of Romina’s photographs will be displayed this summer 2020 in Fuerteventura, Canary Islands, at the Art Centre ‘La Regenta’ from July until September.
Photo Journal by Robina Belda.