FIELD NOTES 054
32 pp / 190 x 230mm
Staple Bound
Fedrigoni paper
First edition of 100
FN054
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A bittersweet ode to summer holidays and mass tourism.
The year is 1994, and I am sitting in the backseat of my parents' family car, naming all the other red, blue, black and white family cars that pass us on the motorway to Spain. This keeps me occupied and quiet for the majority of the 15 hour drive. We check into our holiday apartment, and from the balcony of our temporary home we can see all the other apartments in the town, all the other balconies, swimming pools, beach beds, umbrellas, air mattresses and towels, waiting for fellow Northern Europeans. This is how we spent most of our summer holidays, and it was bliss. It seems the days of mass tourism are numbered, but that doesn't mean all the specifically designed infrastructure will just cease to exist. The structures will remain for everyone to see.
During the pandemic I visited Spain to see what the world looks like without the tourists and get a glimpse of what the effects could be when we would indeed stop traveling to these particular locations. La Manga del Mar Menor is a narrow, 22 kilometer long peninsula in southeastern Spain. The town has roughly 17,000 permanent inhabitants, but has capacity to host over 200.000 people in high season. Completely surrounded by seawater (the lagoon on the west of the town is directly connected to the Mediterranean), the place is at risk of rising sea levels and could therefore ironically stay safe when we commit to traveling less far and frequently in our efforts to fight rapid climate change. I have witnessed an almost empty La Manga during the pandemic, and with that I had a preview of the end of mass tourism.
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FIELD NOTES is a series of affordable zines showcasing photography projects which explore our relationship with 'place'.