The director of the Biodiversity Foundation, Sonia Castañeda, has inaugurated the photographic exhibition “Fractals, the marshes and Doñana” in Seville. The director of the Biodiversity Foundation of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and the Environment, Sonia Castañeda, inaugurated today, at the Foundation’s headquarters in Seville, the photographic exhibition “Fractals, the marshes and Doñana”, which shows the fractal structures of the Andalusian marshes, including those of the Doñana National Park. Its purpose is to make these spaces known from a new perspective in order to raise awareness among visitors about their conservation.
The exhibition, which can be visited free of charge throughout 2016 at the headquarters of the Biodiversity Foundation in Seville (Plaza Patio de Banderas 16) from Monday to Friday, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., shows the harmonious forms that water and sand have shaped for centuries in Doñana
Sonia Castañeda was accompanied during the inauguration by the deputy director of the Autonomous National Parks Agency, Montserrat Fernández, and the photographer of the exhibition himself, Héctor Garrido, among others. Gervasio Iglesias, co-producer of the film “Marshland”, who was inspired by the Doñana marshes to film some of the scenes in the film, also attended the inauguration.
The exhibition includes a selection of the best images from the work “Fractals. Intimate Anatomy of the Marsh”, by Héctor Garrido himself, with more than 200 aerial images of this enclave.
These images served as inspiration for the production of the Spanish film “Marshland”, by Alberto Rodríguez, awarded in 2015 with ten Goya Awards and which shows among its many scenes the marshes of the Guadalquivir included in Garrido’s work.
MORE THAN 300 FLIGHT HOURS TO TAKE THE PHOTOGRAPHS
Accompanied by texts that describe this natural environment and its peculiar and spectacular geometry, the aerial photographs have been taken by Héctor Garrido for more than three hundred flights and more than forty years, especially at sunrise and sunset, to intensify the reliefs and colors of this natural space. The photographs have been taken for the Doñana Biological Station of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and make up the longest series that has been produced in Spain and one of the most valuable tools for managing the Doñana protected area.
The exhibition has already passed through the main headquarters of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment in Madrid and the Palacio de La Moncloa, where for the first time an open-air exhibition was held.
A HEADQUARTERS NESTLED IN A HISTORIC SETTING
The headquarters of the Biodiversity Foundation in Seville is located within the surroundings of the Royal Alcazar of Seville and is listed as an asset of cultural interest. In 1999 it was the subject of refurbishment and rehabilitation works. In the execution of these works on the building, remains of monumental architecture from different periods were discovered, such as a monumental horseshoe gate, which is not only a unique architectural element, as it is one of the few monumental horseshoe gates of the 10th-11th century in Al Andalus, but it is the only preserved gate in the city prior to the Almohad period.
