En Selvas is a photographic series begun in the 21st century, though its conceptual origin can be traced back to a trip through southern Mexico in 1985, and also to my cinematic landscape Green (1978).

It expresses a sensation and a desire that can arise when you travel through a forest. The absence of horizon and an excess of closeness can produce a desire for openness. The dream, then, is to convert the limiting material into a space of light and colour, empty, open and free. En Selvas represents the conversion of the solid and defined into something fluid or ethereal, undefined and open. The landscapes in this series have a basis in reality, but tend to sublimate it.

Although I wasn’t thinking about smells when I took the photo, I can say that it smells of forest by the side of a mountain river in summer, of earth beaten by the sun and of shady earth. In a deeper sense, it corresponds to a possible language of smells by virtue of its ethereal, open character, expressible only through a progressive gradation of different colours and tones. In this case greens predominate, with varying degrees of blue and yellow, of sunlight and shadow.

Juan Bufill