Ustedes, los vivos

For Ustedes, los vivos [You the Living] photographer David Hornillos once again worked in the vicinity of a train station in Madrid; this time on a vacant lot adjacent to Chamartín, the city’s North station. In a similar vein to his previous project Mediodía, this book follows a constant stream of characters as they traipse across a desert landscape that might once have been a graveyard. The work is threaded together by a fine horizon line that traces the path trodden by these humans. Atocha and Chamartín are Madrid’s only two active railway stations – reverse sides of the coin, of the city and of David Hornillo’s photographic work. The suffocating orange that confines the characters in Mediodía is now a counterpoint to the blue fluidity of Ustedes, los vivos, where we gaze upon a metaphysical procession; the framed transit, naked and clean, of a cast of characters who are going nowhere because they are merely passing by. Beings thrust into the world. Ustedes, los vivos frames a philosophical space and invites us to let our thoughts ramble on our condition as temporary entities and on existence itself.