On 6 June 1944, thousands of men fought on five beaches once codenamed Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. A year later, the war in Europe would end. The project covers these beaches in a series in which passers-by, bathers and sunsets coexist with the metallic structures that remain, like ancient monuments of our wartime past, which make us understand how certain events articulate new meanings in the landscape.


The Normandy landings marked the beginning of the end of the II World War, an important event engraved in the memory of the 20th century. But what happens when a place becomes part of history, and can the landscape retain its memory?


The space portrayed by the photographer contains a crack linked to our past. Latent like the vestige of a wound, it attracts the attention of both the photographer and the spectator because intuiting the ruins of a battle from the present also brings us face to face with its ghosts.


All this is a reflection on the weight and the trace of the history that has been trapped in the light of those beaches, where thousands of men stumbled upon an inferno of mines and gunfire that generated confusion of thousands of dead who have remained linked to the constant crashing of the waves. When you look closely at those beaches through a camera, you perceive a tremor that transcends the visual because photography, using the poetics of the contemplation of the place, makes us participants in our history.

  • 1-ENS-NH10621-0
    Rest of the artificial bridges constructed for the Disembark. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH08833-3
    Rest of the artificial bridges constructed for the Disembark. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG26026-2
    Rest of the artificial bridges constructed for the Disembark. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG26024-1
    Rest of the artificial bridges constructed for the Disembark. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG26012-1
    Rest of the artificial bridges constructed for the Disembark. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG25536A-0
    Rest of the artificial bridges constructed for the Disembark. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH08115A-0
    Arromanches beach. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH08117-0
    Arromanches beach. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG2553-0
    Arromanches beach. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG2555-0
    Arromanches beach. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG25622A-0
    Arromanches beach. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG26326-0
    St.Côme beach. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG26324-0
    St.Côme beach. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG26329A-0
    St.Côme beach. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG26424-1
    St.Côme beach. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG25226-0
    Le Chaos beach. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG2518A-2
    Le Chaos. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG25122A-4
    Le Chaos. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG2615-4
    "Czech hedgehogs" (were used to impede the movement of tanks and vehicles). Varreville beach. Code name "Utach Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG25714-0
    Colleville Sur Mer beach. Code name "Omaha Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG2578A-0
    Colleville Sur Mer beach. Code name "Omaha Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG2575-0
    Colleville Sur Mer beach. Code name "Omaha Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG25734A-0
    Colleville Sur Mer beach. Code name "Omaha Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG25733-0
    Colleville Sur Mer beach. Code name "Omaha Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH10912-0
    Vierville Sur Mer beach. Code name "Omaha Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG2645-4
    Arromanches. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG26017-1
    Arromanches. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG26019-1
    Arromanches harbour. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG26031-0
    Arromanches harbour. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG26033-0
    Arromanches beach. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG2568A-0
    Vierville Sur Mer beach. Code name "Omaha Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG25810-0
    Arromanches beach. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG25822A-1
    Arromanches beach. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG25720A-0
    Vierville Sur Mer beach. Code name "Omaha Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG2563-3
    Vierville Sur Mer beach. Code name "Omaha Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG25629A-1
    Arromanches beach. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH08722-0
    Arromanches beach. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH1087-3
    St. Laurent beach. Code name "Omaha Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH10933-0
    Vierville Sur Mer beach. Code name "Omaha Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH10929A-0
    St. Laurent beach. Code name "Omaha Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH10935-0
    Vierville Sur Mer beach. Code name "Omaha Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH10928-1
    St. Laurent beach. Code name "Omaha Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH10926-1
    St. Laurent beach. Code name "Omaha Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH10924A-1
    St. Laurent beach. Code name "Omaha Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH10922A-1
    St. Laurent beach. Code name "Omaha Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG25036-0
    Aubin Sur Mer beach. Code name "Juno Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG25015A-0
    Aubin Sur Mer beach. Code name "Juno Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG26210-0
    Asnelles beach. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG25526-2
    Arromanches beach. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH0761-3
    Colleville Sur Mer beach. Code name "Omaha Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH0725-0
    Arromanches beach. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH0737-0
    Vierville Sur Mer beach. Code name "Omaha Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH08710-2
    Arromanches beach. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH07215A-0
    Arromanches beach. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH09510A-0
    St.Côme beach. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH07514-0
    Vierville Sur Mer beach. Code name "Omaha Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH07431-0
    Vierville Sur Mer beach. Code name "Omaha Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG25313a-0
    Colleville Sur Mer beach. Code name "Omaha Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 3-ENS-NH1163A-2
    Arromanches beach. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH0721A-0
    Arromanches beach. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NG2625-0
    Varreville beach. Code name "Utach Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH0785-2
    Ravenoville beach. Code name "Utach Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH0841A-3
    Arromanches beach. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH09113A-0
    Port-en-Bessin beach (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH09127A-0
    Port-en-Bessin beach (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH08029A-1
    Ravenoville beach. Code name "Utach Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH07910-0
    Ravenoville beach. Code name "Utach Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH07326-1
    Arromanches harbour. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH09019-1
    Port-en-Bessin beach (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH07715A-0
    Arromanches. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH08119-0
    Arromanches. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH08435-1
    Arromanches beach. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH08310-3
    Arromanches beach. Code name "Gold Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH10917A-0
    Vierville Sur Mer beach. Code name "Omaha Beach" (Normandy, France).
  • 1-ENS-NH10919-0
    Vierville Sur Mer beach. Code name "Omaha Beach" (Normandy, France).
La Fragua Room, Tabacalera
Madrid. Spain
June 2019
The respect we feel for ruins has to do both with what is seen and what is not. They are like scars on the body. The terse, torn flesh we see contains the history of a wound that was itself a testimony to an event in our lives. The ruin is a trace and a testimony. There something was built, there it fell, there man acted before nature and time acted once more in their turn. We cannot view a landscape with ruins as we would view a virgin landscape, because in the latter case we are searching for unexplored purity while in the former we find traces of the human exploration of life, with its waves of creation and destruction. This received early acknowledgement from literature and painting, and in the last two centuries from photography and film.
Eduardo Nave’s magnificent frieze encapsulates the turbulent dignity of the trace that has been left behind. His passage through the light of Normandy is a memorable one. For someone like me, born on the shore of the Mediterranean with its sensorially contrasted colours, the light of the North always has a magical quality, the promise of a spiritual abstraction. Hence the value of the painting of Caspar David Friedrich, revolutionary at the time, with which Nave’s work is exquisitely related. The light of the North is especially difficult for someone on the hunt for images because it demands mettle, subtlety and the unfettered activity of the ‘inner eye’, the one which looks at the world from within and inwardly.
I have known few photographers who display such mastery in this dialogue with the light of the North as Eduardo Nave. I am certain that his inner eye is perfectly educated for the accomplishment of this complex mission. Nave’s Normandy, with its immobile vertigo, is a spiritual landscape. Sky, sea, cliffs and brief human silhouettes make up a purified meditation that each viewer can mirror in his or her own way.
Nevertheless, this meditation, so essential in the beauty of its forms, necessarily includes the trace of human events, and in this case the tragic occurrence of war. Nave’s Normandy is the light of the North, but it is also the blood and violence trapped in the wreckage that recalls the battle. Not the least of Nave’s merits is his ability to integrate the mysterious innocence of the space so harmoniously with the tragedy of a setting where the human drama has been played out.
In the photography of Eduardo Nave, light and memory converge to nourish an extraordinary poetics.


Rafael Argullol