Street portrait of confined Madrid | Madrid

Pamplonesa who has been living in Madrid for more than a decade, Alemán does not usually have the capital as his goal, but his, for about 20 years, has been going to the towns every weekend for parties throughout Spain and Portugal, like part of a gang of photographers. Without pilgrimages or processions to attend and without being able to leave Madrid, he has taken images in a city that, he says, he does not recognize. “From the swarm noise of thousands of people and traffic, we have come to see the city through the windows and walls with messages. This Madrid is like a skeleton, without sap to live, of an apocalyptic feeling. That’s what I wanted to transmit ”.

On deserted and silent streets, Alemán has spoken and photographed the few people he met. “There were homeless people, but also people who were not and are now on the street, some foreigners. People who have lost their precarious jobs and have nowhere to go. ” The impression that all these people have given him “is one of fragility and vulnerability.” Like that older man who looks at the camera, with a disoriented gesture, while he queues to buy at the supermarket. Or the overwhelming image of the deserted Puerta del Sol, in which you can only see a human-shaped bundle that sleeps wrapped between its clothes on the ground, in front of the statue of Carlos III. Or portraits of personal stories, such as that of Cinnabar, a man whom he captured in his home behind a glass invaded by snails, “which are a metaphor for how we live now, in our shell,” adds the author. A selection of this work has been uploaded by Alemán to your website and can also be seen on the website of the International Center for Photography and Cinema (EFTI).

It was precisely in that school that Alemán was trained, with the luck of having Chema Madoz, Juan Manuel Castro Prieto, Alberto García-Alix and Cristina García Rodero as teachers. Alemán says that “devotion” to photography had been born years before, during a stay in Paris, when she was “dumbfounded” at the Pompidou with the photos of Hidden Spain, the totem book on festivals and popular rites that catapulted García Rodero in 1989. “There I discovered a world that I was unfamiliar with and became hooked on party photography.”

The state of alarm has paralyzed several works that Alemán has pending completion. “One about San Fermin, another about religious festivals, which is called Ash Wednesday, one about winter festivals and finally the one related to how animals are used in festivals, called Bestiary”.

Throughout his career, including photos of Stop Madrid, German has worked in black and white. “I come from the negative, from the laboratory, and I see reality in two extreme colors, black and white is a synthesis. While color gives too much information, and the most important thing about a good image is to remove excess elements, in order to transmit what you have seen, ”he explains. He captures this theory in snapshots like the one he took from the statue of Federico García Lorca, by Julio López, in front of the Spanish Theater. In it you can see the monument to the poet “with his legs tied by a security tape and an indecent sign that says‘ This park is closed, “he adds. Also surrounded by another of those tapes is the man who rests with his eyes closed sitting on a bench.

Prints of an unrecognizable Madrid. There is the solitary Plaza Mayor, with the terraces closed and crossed by a single person, “which allows us to look at the lines of the floor and the windows, something that does not usually happen to us.” And to close his photo essay, in which each image is mysterious because it invites you to ask questions, Alemán has chosen a photograph of the deserted Puerta del Sol, in which only a girl with a mask is walking. “It was the first day that the children were released. I wanted to end an image of hope. “

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