The Fall
© David MaiselIn Fall of 2013, Maisel was invited to Spain as part of the photographic project ToledoContemporánea, in which twelve photographers were commissioned to create work about the Spanish city of Toledo as a celebration of the fourth centennial of the painter El Greco.
Maisel’s work in The Fall is his response to the areas between the city of Toledo, which was once the cultural epicenter of Europe, and the much larger capital city of Madrid. In The Fall, one feels that the worlds of painting and photography have merged together. The series is based on three different areas of the Spanish landscape:
Borox –strange, ashen landscapes in a mining and agricultural region of La Mancha. The soil is laden with the mineral borax, which gives a surreal, ashen quality; the landscape shines, almost like a grey sea in a desert.
Vicalvaro – developments on the periphery of Madrid, where construction was halted after the economic collapse of 2008. The abandoned zones appear like the surreal aftermath of a bombed out city or an alien landing field.
Fuensalida – croplands in the La Mancha region, gridded, crosshatched, and abstracted.
click on the link to view the complete set of images in the archive
