Growing Up

Growing up (2009)

Through a collection of twelve photographs, the Growing up project by Juan Margolles speaks to us of the urban scars caused by population growth and a frenzied economic boom. It seeks to stimulate a reflective gaze on that growth and the urban landscape that surrounds us after the transformations produced in recent years.

Beyond the environmental and economic problems they have caused, what Juan Margolles wants to offer in this work is a starting point for a reflection on how contemporary urban development can transform social patterns and affect the life the life shared by its inhabitants.

More than being representative of the city or the specific place in which they were built, they rise up in a setting that illustrates one concept of urban development, one without context, isolated and in constant friction with nature. They are the evidence – not a metaphor- of how cities devour nature, images characteristic of a type of construction where both the idea of personal isolation and of an urban growth based on conquering nature become clear. This growth is uncontrolled, both upward and along the surface , which makes the separation between city and the countryside increasingly difficult and questions our development as individuals and as a society in a daily environment of desolation, isolation or overpopulation within cities. Those solitary, isolated buildings lacking any sign of life or human existence appear to us as a sign of our times: an individualistic society and an inhospitable city far removed from the ideal of coexistence to which urban planning should aspire.

Oliva María Rubio