JOAN SASTRE

 

CLOSE TO THE GROUND

 

              Shooting is something that we all do. Everyone has a phone in his pocket with a small camera, that can record what is happening around us. It is clear that the current cameras are affordable instruments to people as were formerly pencils. But not all owners of pencils made great drawings, only a few used them as instruments of artistic expression. Something similar happens with cameras and photography, so many people portrait the family, register their vacations and set for memory events and commemorations. Others, however, use the camera to fix ideas, to propose ways of thinking, raise questions, or simply draw attention to a particular topic. I'm not sure that verbal language is the best way of transmission of our thoughts, perhaps the image is a more universal form of communication.
              I always work with series and usually I search for topics that allow me to delay the session until my loss of interest. I photographed the language of the deaf, of ice and of fire, of paintings, my own depositions, and ultimately mops. Old mops that resemble the filaments of anemones, the limbs of octopus, even the naive scribbles of children.

              While taking pictures of the mops used by the hotel cleaning service I discovered that some of them were signed, offering me, a new thoughts. Why do they do it? What do they want? Do you just identify your tools or want to record their passage through a work almost invisible and always despised? At that moment, a work that, in principle, had no more intention that to explore the aesthetics qualities of the mop’s strands was loaded with meanings. I recorded the inscriptions left by the prisoners on the walls of their cells, guns displayed in the windows of armories and the painter’s signature in the corner of their paintings. Suddenly, in the tangle of frayed cords, I discovered a wig, the sloppy hair of the cleaning lady. A thick mass of hair, smooth or curly, cleaner or dirtier, but still smeared with sadness.

Once I tried to photograph a new mop, but it did not work. The new bright colours, without the vices fostered by multiple drainings, failed to convey the feeling of weariness and dignity, that time had developed with old mops, dirt and debris.
           My intention was not to make a work of sociology; I was seized with the reflection (I read that if painting forces the author to synthesize his environment, photography always involves an analysis of it). So if you ever go through the laundry room of a hotel and find a line of mops leaning against the wall each with a name: Estela, Carina, Boni, Irene ... do not considered them simple cleaning utensils, think they are weapons of an army of people who discreetly work for your comfort.