“What you make from a tree should be at least as miraculous as what you cut down.”
The Overstory, Richard Powers

A study led by the Key Biodiversity Areas Secretariat in Cambridge published in 2021, suggests that just 3% of the world’s land remains ecologically intact with healthy populations of all its original animals and undisturbed habitat.

Even if the numbers sound like an exaggeration, they do point to the obvious of how difficult it is to find spots in the coastal regions of the country where hotels or residential developments are not taking the place of ecosystems, where forests are not treated as managed gardens, where nature still behaves like nature and not like a roadshow.

From 1986 when the total of foreign visitors amounted to just 260.840 to 2.192.059 visitors in 2011 and 3.016.667 in 2018, the stress on our coasts and protected areas has increased dramatically, making resources like land and water a point of friction between local inhabitants, large touristic projects and conservation initiatives. The underlying reason: in 2018 the income from tourist-related activities reached almost $3.823,7 million, more than all our main agricultural exports combined.

For the sake of entertainment, simulations of well-being, and financial prosperity, it seems we agree with transforming these vital ecosystems into an industrialized collage of postcards, sterile objects of desire.

This series is a question mark on those fading scenarios, on the myth of paradise and the elusive deception of biophilia, on the depth of our needs inside nature´s back; an inquiry on the value of our perception of nature and the industries we build them upon; on the longing of a time when traveling along the coast used to mean a chance to breathe, see and listen if there ever was such a time.