Photo contest
Santiago Espinosa de los Monteros

The review of the works of those who participated in the contest tends to be an encounter with a diversity of perspectives and frequently the finding of new observation platforms.

This time, FINI’s main topic is water. With everything it might mean to us, going deeply on this subject is already a complex matter. Any approach must be supported with enough references, from scientific to poetic ones; also, those reporting its bad use and those stressing its aesthetic qualities, from its tangential look to the confirmation of its absence.

The number of approaches is almost equivalent to the multiple meanings water may have in our history and daily life. The formation of this sort of iconographic universe adds up to our ways of seeing and understanding water.

While reviewing the received proposals for this contest, it was especially noticeable a serious global concern. Participants of many parts of the world agreed in highlighting the water scarcity and the wrong management on behalf of the government, coupled with the efforts of communities to preserve and protect it and guarantee its continuity.

In this road, the works received focused on the great open spaces as well as the rich details of close ups to tiny water formations. Ice, delicate streams still transparent, small waterfalls which fight to survive; with the purpose of showing this common secret which is the desire to preserve this liquid.

There is no doubt that the topic in this festival’s edition has left great lessons and has switch on global alarm signals. We have here the perspectives not of experts nor creators of great hydraulic works, but of simple people who share their commitment and concern about one of the most precious goods which has no borders and whose survival depends on how we use it, not in the future, but in this precise moment.

To save water, we need to start feeling it ours and never forget about it nor abandon it.