Where oblivion might not dwell, by María Clauss
Winner of the 26th edition of the Luis Valtueña International Humanitarian Photography Award of Médicos del Mundo.
Memory is an exercise of reconstruction of the past in today moment, photography is a “medium” to recover it. Each portrait of a quelched individual is kept as a treasure in the hands of their households, each location that has power in itself for what has actually been lived, and each face of the pain of the son/daughter/sister/ bro for having lost him/her join to recuperate it. This project carried out throughout 2021 and early 2022 in the province of Huelva, aims to make noticeable the spaces of repression, the quelched, and their direct family members, sharing the same visual area.
There was barely any resistance in big part of Huelva after the uprising and, in those towns where it did exist, it was quickly annulled (August 1936). With 126 tombs situated or determined to date, Huelva is the 2nd Andalusian province in such ominous ranking -only behind Seville-, a second location it also holds -after Granada- in the variety of victims (10,199). And the mining town of Nerva has in its cemetery the biggest rural tomb in Spain, it is estimated that the remains of as much as 800 individuals could be found.
It is time for Fact, Justice, and Reparation; it is time that oblivion does not dwell. This documentary project belongs to the exhibit “Donde no habite el olvido”, organized by the Commissioner of Democratic Memory of the Diputación de Huelva.