One of the largest and most important reserves of fresh water in the world is situated in the Southern Patagonian Ice Field located in Argentina’s The Glaciers National Park. Outstanding is the Perito Moreno Glacier declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and considered the eighth wonder of the world. It is the most important of the 356 glaciers found in that area and was baptised with its name in honour of Francisco Moreno, creator of the Argentinean Scientific Society.

No hay tal lugar (There Is No Such Place) is a photographic series that shows the landscape as both signifier and signified and demands awareness and commitment for sustainable development of the planet. Without special care and attention of settings like this, it is probable that such a place will not exist in the near future. We will only have access – as the name of the series suggests – to the signified; in contrast the signifier, the continent, the object of contemplation will have disappeared. The title of this series has not been conjugated in a past or future tense, but in the present, a present that warns us about the denaturalisation of planet Earth.

No hay tal lugar bears witness to a wound. Each work is composed of two pieces or a visual diptych on the same location with the pieces physically separated one from the other as a metaphor of a present that is being ruptured and divided in two. Even as a broken landscape, No hay tal lugar still cherishes a hope of uniting both halves and echoes the need to back a sustainable development capable of closing the cracks that define the setting. Like a wounded patient, the landscape enters the author’s intimate operating room where an attempt is made to reinstate with a scalpel the distance separating man from nature.

Mireia A. Puigventos