Photographer Héctor Garrido (Huelva, 1969) tells, in the description text of this collection of landscapes, that Cayetana de Silva, Duchess of Alba, was an exceptionally beautiful and intelligent woman who lived at the end of the 17th century by the estuary of the Guadalquivir River, and that painter Francisco de Goya shared with her those unique landscapes during an intense period, which prompted a close relationship between both. Neither Cayetana nor Goya ever had the chance to fly, but in the artist’s Capricho no. 61, titled Volavérunt, the Duchess is depicted in dreamlike flight. Volavérunt is also the title of this collection of aerial photographs in which Garrido not only portrays the beauty of this emblematic nature reserve in Andalusia, but uses it also as a tool to take a census of the birds in Doñana’s marshlands for the park’s Biological Station. It is an important management tool he has developed over several years with his pilot Hans Nerlinger, and that makes it possible, on one hand, to gather data on the state of health of this protected space and its evolution in time and, on the other, it invites to envision, in each trip, what the eyes of the beautiful woman in Goya’s Volavérunt print had seen from the air.
When the tide goes down natural fractal formations appear (right), very often completely covered _x005F_x000D_
by thread algae, turning _x005F_x000D_
the seabed of the Bay _x005F_x000D_
of Cádiz an intense _x005F_x000D_
green hue (left).
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The same marshes, covered with water and when the winds are down, produce amazing reflections between water and sky, with scenes like these of _x005F_x000D_
wild horses grazing _x005F_x000D_
in the water (below).
Fishermen fight against the strong wind in the estuary of the Guadalquivir River (left). The traces of the coming and going of men and machines on vast saline lands (right).
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The Dunaliella, a _x005F_x000D_
tiny extremophile _x005F_x000D_
algae, dyes the hypersaline water _x005F_x000D_
of the bay red. The ridges or low walls _x005F_x000D_
built to channel the water currents jut _x005F_x000D_
out in the background (below).