February 2024
Atlantic Ocean · Porto, Portugal. 2017
Gelatin silver print, 26x26 cm (10¼ x 10¼ in), limited edition to 30 prints.
"I love how the sea loves the shore: Sweetly and fiercely!"
Federico de Roberto, 1861-1927
"The only things the sea gives us are hard knocks and, sometimes, the chance to feel strong.".
Christopher McCandless, 1968-1992
I always try to learn lessons from nature; it's something that fascinates me, and perhaps the sea is one of the elements that most closely resembles the vicissitudes of life.
The sea can give man all the good within it, becoming his sustenance and a source of happiness in many aspects, but it can also take everything away. It can cradle us in calmness or it can display a terrible fury, shaking us like a tiny particle.
But does this duality make the sea perverse? Not at all. To curse the sea is like cursing life, senseless, for it is not life, nor is it the sea, but the circumstances and how we face them.
The sea doesn't punish the rocks when it crashes against them; it sculpts and shapes them. Cliffs and beaches wouldn't be as they are if they hadn't resisted every onslaught of the waves, molding their character. Where some see a constant struggle of the elements, I see a rhythmic and synchronized duet. Where the salty water seems only to erode the rock's cavities, I see affinity, like the intertwined bodies of lovers, tender and passionate in the same moment.
Like the cliffs, we are rocks facing the waves and adversity, and it is precisely this that imprints our character.
We are the result of the storms we have lived through.
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