LUMES

LUMES traces a slow disappearance. Set in rural Galicia, in northwestern Spain, the project reflects on what remains when human presence withdraws from the land—not abruptly, but through neglect, political omission, and time.

In Galician, lumes once referred to inhabited houses: the fire burning inside them, the warmth around which families and communities gathered. That fire marked presence and continuity. Today, the same word more often names the wildfires that cross empty mountains each summer. The fire that once signaled life now exposes absence.

Over several years, I photographed those who remain. Mostly elderly, often living alone, they carry forms of knowledge shaped by centuries of coexistence with forests, animals, and seasonal rhythms. Their daily gestures sustain fragile continuities as villages empty, paths close, and cultivated terraces collapse. These images do not seek nostalgia or heroism, but acknowledge endurance alongside vulnerability.

Fire appears here not as spectacle, but as consequence. As traditional practices fade, landscapes once shaped by care become increasingly unstable and flammable. Smoke travels far from these territories, while its causes remain rooted in local absences.

Yet traces persist. Semi-wild herds still move along old routes. Terraces are still tended. Forests bear the marks of human hands. In these quiet acts, the bond between cultural memory and ecological balance becomes visible.

LUMES inhabits a space of tension—between disappearance and persistence, care and neglect. It asks whether presence itself, however fragile, can still leave a trace strong enough to resist forgetting.