At 7:39AM on March 11, 2004, three commuter trains departing from Alcalá de Henares were bombed en route to Madrid, and a fourth exploded by mistake at 7:36AM. One hundred ninety-one people were assassinated and 1,500 wounded in what constituted the largest terrorist attack in the history of Europe. The city awoke in the worst manner possible and remained gray for several days. No one understood anything, and there was an indefinable silence in the streets. That morning people called to check on each other and from that afternoon on, Atocha Station turned into a secular temple where Madrid would go to cry and see others cry.
NOPHOTO takes the events that befell March 11, 2004, as a point of departure for its collective project Cercanías (After 11-M) on the commuter trains that Madrid residents take to go to work. By inviting the photographers to approach to these events with complete freedom, the project constitutes a creative process in the first person.
Sombras de nosotros mismos (Shadows of Ourselves) de Juan Santos, En silencio (In Silence) by Matías Costa, Todos muertos (All Dead) by Paco Gómez, Notas manuscritas (Handwritten Notes) by Eva Sala, 11.3.04 by Carlos Sanva, Duermenadie (Noonesleeps) by Jorquera and Negro alba (Black Dawn) by Juan Valbuena.
The end result of the project is compiled in a video called C-2 in which Jonás Bel offers an in-depth look at the photographers’ creative processes, serving as the narrative thread that binds this collective creation together.