Euskadi

Now that travelling has become something (strange) we used to do without knowing how blessed we were, I take deeper pleasure from looking at my travelling pictures. I feel like sharing them: this time not isolated, a picture speaking for itself as I used to do, but as a showcase of a place and a time of bonheur.

Few years ago, my family and I travelled to the Basque Country in Spain. We stayed in Bilbao, Lequeitio and San Sebastian and found some time to take a quick look to the mythical Biarritz beach, in France, just across the border.

BILBAO

Getting closer to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Designed by Frank Gehry, the building is absolutely amazing and still surprising, even after having seen lots of images of it. From anywhere one looks the building seems different, there’s a curve, a perspective, a way the light shines that is always new. As everyone, I took a lot of pictures of the building but I’m just sharing some details I like.

A closer look to the “Maman” by Louise Bourgeois
Flowers from the “Puppy”, by Jeff Koon, a behemoth West Highland terrier carpeted in bedding plants
Detail of the “The Tall Tree and the Eye” (2009), sculpure by Anish Kapoor. Seventy three reflective spheres that mirror the surrounding city and the Museum itself
 Titanium, galvanized steel, limestone and the blue sky

Along the coast

Lequeitio
Lequeitio
Zarautz
San Sebastian
San Sebastian: La Concha Beach
San Sebastian: La Concha Beach
San Sebastian: La Concha Beach
Biarritz (France)
Biarritz (France)
Biarritz (France)

The beach is a great scenario to photograph people, not just because they are relaxed and at ease but mainly because they are “undressed” of whom they are in real life. In the beach one is not a doctor or an electrician, a nurse, a butcher, a catholic, a wife, a jazz lover or a great cook. Sometimes, one is still a mother, a father, a grandparent, children are children, we may tell who likes swimming or reading or playing with beach rackets and friendship is visible. But, very, very often, at the beach, people have a moment with themselves, just them and the sea or the sand. I love witnessing those moments.

Zarautz
Zarautz
Biarritz
San Sebastian: La Concha Beach
Zarautz
San Sebastian: La Concha Beach

The immense blue sky

Santo André Beach, Alentejo, Portugal (taken with iPhone, no filters). September 2018

I love the beach in September: most people is gone, there’s space and silence. Yesterday the sky was so clear. It was also windy and a bit cold and, as the afternoon went by, just a few of us remain seated there, wearing shirts and enjoying the light, the sea and the vastness of the sand.

Aniki-Bóbó

dsc_4795-2

dsc_4799-3São Miguel, Azores, August 2016

Aniki-Bóbó is a Portuguese film, directed by Manoel de Oliveira in 1942, about poor children, living in the streets of Porto city. The children were “real” street children and the film, a portrait of people’s true poverty during a time of fascist government (that lasted until 1974). Some iconic scenes in the film show the little boys playing at Ribeira quayside, jumping into the Douro River.

These pictures were taken in the island of São Miguel, where poverty coexists with tourism. The local boys having fun at a kind of natural swimming pool, reminded me of the film.