Most of my photographs revolve around specific subjects, whether it is an old house, an electricity transformer tower, a bridge, perhaps a farm animal, or some unusual piece of machinery. I am almost always driving with my radar switched on, watching for anything that might catch my eye as I crawl along quiet back roads, much to the frustration of the drivers who end up behind me (fortunately for them, I have a habit of pulling over and letting them pass).
Although this is usually how I find my photographs, every now and then the roles are reversed. Instead of me finding the photograph, the photograph finds me.
The image I am sharing today is a perfect example. While driving through the barren and monotonous landscapes of the Zamora countryside, with little hope of finding anything in particular to photograph, I was suddenly overwhelmed by an explosion of vivid yellow that made me hit the brakes almost instinctively (one of these days that reflex is going to get me into trouble). Coming across an immense field completely transformed by the flowering rapeseed, like a sea of flowers stretching to the horizon, was an experience that left me absolutely captivated.
For someone used to seeing these vast agricultural landscapes, the scene might seem perfectly ordinary, perhaps even unremarkable. But I was born in Galicia, a land of ridiculously small plots cultivated with an enormous variety of vegetables and crops, giving the landscape the appearance of a chaotic mosaic, as though it had been covered with a giant patchwork quilt. Until not so many years ago, poverty was simply part of everyday life in Galicia, and every small piece of land mattered. Not a single square metre could go to waste, so the land was divided again and again with each generation through inheritance. This pattern of land division is what we know here as “minifundio”.
Perhaps that is why these vast fields stretching towards the horizon, covered during the flowering season by a brilliant yellow blanket of rapeseed, left me speechless, and photographing them was an absolute pleasure. It is true that black and white film photography gives up that extraordinary colour entirely, but even without it, the texture and contrast of these immense fields create a remarkably compelling image. The result was a very simple photograph with only a few elements, proving that a striking subject is not always necessary. Sometimes the sheer scale of the landscape is more than enough.
