Carlos Spottorno

From the project “The PIGS”. Jerez, Spain 2012

Carlos Spottorno (b.1971, Hungry) was raised in Rome, Paris and Madrid. He began his career as an art director and switched to photography in 2001. Since then Carlos has combined long term documentary projects with both editorial and commercial assignments. He has received awards from World Press Photo in 2003, YIPPA in 2011, American Photography 24, 26 and 27 and was a finalist for a Visa d’Or in 2008, the European Publishers Award in 2009 and 2013, and RM Photobook Award in 2012. His photographs have been published in National Geographic España, El País Semanal, D Magazine and Marie Claire France among others. Carlos has published four books: History Seekers (Blur Ediciones), China Western (La Fabrica), Philosophia Naturalis (self published) and La Hora del Recreo – Break Time (Lünwerg). He is featured with Reportage by Getty.

About the Photograph:

“A cow stands on a sidewalk of a newly built dormitory suburb on the outskirts of Jerez, a city that illustrates everything that went wrong in Spain: rapid growth based on seemingly limitless borrowing, which produced a glut of houses and office space that nobody wants, right where the city abruptly ends. This mid-sized city of 212,000 people owes one billion euros; second only to Madrid.  Unemployment in Jerez is around 34 percent. I find this image particularly disturbing. Wild or farm animals in an urban context are always a sign that something is not going as it should. That cow seems to be lost; with its neck streched, as if it was looking for the way back to the farm. All that garbage right on the plants… this is truly the frontier where an artificial city clashes with the countryside. Those boxy buildings, the empty street… all that shows exactly what happened: they bought the land from a farmer. They built in a rush, but they went bankrupt before selling everything they built. Now nobody is taking care of anything.”