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.

Daniel Cuevas Gallery
Madrid. Spain
June 2021