SIGNIS

Montseny = mont [mountain] + signis [sign].

When the Romans travelled across the Mediterranean and sighted the Montseny massif, it signalled their proximity to Barcelona.

As a child, I used to see Montseny from my grandparents’ house; it was near and far, eternal yet unknown, like a totem. I almost always passed it by to explore higher mountains, I almost always turned my back on it: I preferred to live in the city. My urban imaginary of Montseny was reduced to golden beech forests in autumn, to pixapins and mushroom hunters, to the wrinkled faces of shepherds who existed only in hardcover books.

SIGNIS, which comes from sewk [to follow], answers a call ignored since childhood. It is a desperate journey through threads and signs, a rhizome, an ethnographic inquiry without rigour that satisfies a cosmopolitan thirst, a curiosity to discover what lies beyond the end of the roads, deep within the forest. It is an escape from the city — and from oneself —, a collision, a confusion that loops back on itself: the search becomes an endless process. It is a motorised wandering, mediated through the capture of images with multiple cameras, films and sensors. The more photographs, the greater the understanding of the territory — or so I wanted to believe.

Until one day, linear and productive time dissolved before the centenary chestnut trees and the war stories of Lola de Cal Sant, herself a centenarian. That day, time became inhabitable and experience became lasting memory. At the end of the road there was silence. Now, the summits of Montseny have become a refuge, no longer from a war, but from a furious and noisy world that shakes us whenever we try to live in peace.

Now I observe my home from Montseny, my home from my home. When I travel north and leave it behind me, it no longer signals the proximity of Barcelona; instead, it points towards the home left behind when setting out on a journey. A place in which to be a photographer.

Signis began in 2016 as part of terralab.cat, through a research residency at El Puig, a historic farmhouse managed by the Barcelona Provincial Council. Since then, it has continued to grow through new photographs made during my explorations of the Montseny massif.