My name is Xavier Aragonès. I’m a photographer based in Terrassa, Spain.
My work basically revolves around places and the effects of human
activity on them.
In 2011 I started a (still ongoing) series of one-day photographic trips
along the road network of Catalonia, the place I have lived in for all
of my life. At first I was mainly interested in exploring the decaying
areas surrounding old major roads that in recent years had lost most of
its traffic with the opening of new, faster and safer motorways.
However, as the trips went by, I soon began to widen the focus to the
environments surrounding all kinds of roads, paying a special attention
to everything vernacular and distinctive of the area.
The first body of work to come out of these trips was “Twentysix
Abandoned Catalan Gasoline Stations”. As you may have guessed from the
title, it is a collection of images from 26 different petrol stations in
different stages of abandonment in Catalonia, apart from an obvious
homage to Ed Ruscha’s seminal artist book “Twentysix Gasoline Stations”.
It was published as a photo book in 2017 by Portuguese publishing house
Camera Infinita and was also featured in the form of an exhibition at
the 2018 Revela-T analogue photo festival in Barcelona.
Once I was done with the petrol stations, I decided to carry on my
explorations of the Catalan roadside. I’m currently focused on what I
hope will be the next installment of the series, “Greetings from the
Catalan Roadside”, a kind of return to the original concept behind all
this small scale road-tripping odyssey. It’s been almost a decade since
I first started the project so I guess it’s about time to wrap it all
up.
