FORREST OF CROSSES
2018
El Bosc de les Creus, a.k.a. the forest of crosses, as this place was named by its creator, seemed to me like a separate, small, lonely world in which I was allowed to dive in for a short time. Even the journey turned out to be exciting and mysterious when thick fog snatched my careless, happy mood just a few miles outside of the Spanish city of Barcelona. It transformed the landscape around me into something morbid, frightening and unapproachable. Suddenly the hills in front of me appeared in the fog, with hundreds crippled, twisted crosses standing everywhere. The mysterious atmosphere and the curiosity of what is waiting in the dust kept motivating me and I started exploring the area to find effective compositions for some exceptional landscape captures.
The Forest of Crosses, a project by the Spanish artist Marc Sellarès, was born from the need to externalize his feelings towards his villages forest burned by wildfire started on july 26th 2015 in the town of Òdena. It is an intervention in this forest next to the natural parc of Montserrat. The flames left only charred, lean stubs, where an intact, healthy forrest was growing for hundreds of years. Sellarès decided to modify the dead trees into hundreds of crosses in addition to the terrible fires and also intended to remind of the current climate changes.
The artist continued building the forrest until the date of the anniversary of the fire on july 26th 2016. He built the last cross in front of numerous media, was 1293th cross, wich number matches the number of hectares burned by this fire.
Surrounded by an army of crosses, I lost myself after a short time somewhere in the huge area due to the abundance of effective picture compositions. Completely focused on the numerous photo motifs that temporarily disappeared in the thick fog produced a scary feeling and attracte me at the same time. I just noticed a strange silence around me. No bird could be heard. No animal, not even the smallest insect, crossed my path. It seemed as if the area had died forever after the fires and there couldn't be a more suitable place in the world for this admonishing art project that impressed me, and is even impressing right in this moment.
