The series of pictures Minerva is not a Roman Goddess explores the concept of vulnerability and its associated sense of beauty.
The pandemic started early in 2020 under a globalised feeling of haplessness, presenting forms of weakness that had not worried us before. Minerva is not a Roman Goddess investigates the need to recognise ourselves in the lives of others. The situation of fragility linked with the intention to look beyond the borders, to observe the neighbour, the strangers, or to recognise ourselves in those from a distant country, brings a feeling of loneliness too.
The starting point for this series is the image of Minerva, my teen daughter, that I take as a symbol of beauty shown in the fragility and pass of time.
Minerva has been trying to solve her anxiety issues since the beginning of the pandemic. The photographs are arranged withing two periods of time, expressing daily moments around her life in those days. The first period is El Refugio (The Haven), linking with children’s need for establishing attachment bonds with their caregivers within the home environment. The second period is El Escape (The Escape), about our ability to explore the world with confidence, as well as our intent to evade from our own lives, as a mechanism of defence when problems seem to go beyond our scope.
