Photosonthemove

29 September, 2017

Hay Festival 2017

Big names in the worlds of literature, art, architecture and journalism met last week in Segovia for the 12^th edition of Hay Festival Segovia. Once again, this international festival of ideas, art and thought, proved very popular – over 13,000 people attended one or more of the 94 events that made up the program. Thanks to the solid commitment of IE Foundation to the Festival, IE University again served as key collaborator and academic partner, hosting multiple events and activities from 16 to 24 of September. IE University played host to key players like architects Richard Rogers and Sou Fujimoto, writers Leila Slimani, Fernando Aramburu, Javier Marías and Dolores Redondo, to mention just a few of the 160 guest speakers who shared their experiences in course of the Festival.

Photo Gallery

5 June, 2017

Arizona

The Tucson University of Arizona (USA) is regarded as an international model on technology and engineering studies. Thanks to an agreement with IE University, 25 of its students have come to Spain on a cultural and language immersion program. On the next six weeks, the will go to classes given by professors of both institutions not only in the Santa Cruz la Real campus, but also in different places around Segovia to learn about Spanish language, literature, culture and art.

22 May, 2017

Good things come to those who wait

Now that it’s spring, the weather is milder, and the streets of Segovia are bustling with people from all over. The Plaza Mayor is definitely the best meeting point. It’s where everything happens, and yet it’s also a place where sometimes nothing happens. I walk through its colonnade with my camera at the ready searching impatiently for something inspiring at long last. I say to myself: “Really, is it such a good idea to be rushing things like this?” I change tack, stop in my tracks and resign myself to waiting. All this, just to capture that fleeting moment that makes me want to spring into action. “Photography requires you to know how to experience the pleasure of waiting,” said master photographer Sebastião Salgado. And just when it seems like there’s nothing there for me, I see a mother kiss her child to comfort him – the very picture of tenderness. Austrian narrator and dramatist Arthur Schnitzler said: “To be ready is one thing, to be able to wait is another; but to seize the right moment is everything.” If I hadn’t waited, I would have gone home empty-handed.

9 May, 2017

The unpredictable season

Spring is the most unpredictable season I know. This evening a rain shower fell on Segovia’s Plaza Mayor. Nobody was expecting it. Only a few days ago Segovia was enjoying weather that was more like summer, and today you could be forgiven for thinking it was winter! There’s not an awful lot we can do about it I suppose! Actually, I quite like the fact that May is like this – raining one day, sunny the next. I want each day of the month of May to surprise me when I wake up. If spring wasn’t crazy, it wouldn’t be spring.

27 April, 2017

The carousel has come to town

Andrea’s merry-go-round heralds the arrival of this year’s edition of Titirimundi, the international Puppet Festival, held in Segovia from May 10 to 15. This beautiful carousel, inspired by the fairground attractions first created in the eighteenth century, is a veritable work of art, decorated with paintings of scenes and characters from novels by Jules Verne, Tolkien, and J.K. Rowling. It is also pretty unusual in that it is made of so many different materials, such as wood, leather, glass, metal, pewter and copper. Children can ride on any number of different vessels and artefacts made from scrap metal. Airplanes, hot-air balloons, spaceships, dinosaurs, and wooden horses have taken up residence at the foot of the aqueduct.

5 April, 2017

On a dark day

The passers by looked like puppets in a Chinese shadow theatre with the Roman Aqueduct as the backdrop. The city center was suddenly darker because of this first snowfall of spring, and the snowflakes fell so thick and fast that I could hardly see what was happening more than a few meters in front of me. I couldn’t believe how the weather had turned like that. It has to said, however, that snow is one of the most beautiful miracles performed by nature. Beauty comes in any form it chooses. It always manages to brighten up even the darkest of days.

27 March, 2017

Love story

Snow suddenly began to fall heavily on the Plaza Mayor. All of us there ran for shelter – all except one woman. She stood stock still. A man rushed up to her, put his arms round her and gave her a kiss that seemed to go on forever. The two lovers ran off together down a small street leading off the Plaza. The scene they had played out was like something from an old novel. It made me think of the time Mario Vargas Llosa said that the most beautiful thing in life is love and literature. I couldn’t agree more, I thought.

15 March, 2017

Shadows have more to say

The sun, still low in the sky, casts long shadows. They’re like the arms of the giant which, since early morning, have wanted to wrap themselves around the whole city as if it belonged to them. Sunlight and shadows go up against each other first thing in morning more than any other time of day, bathing rooftops and facades, cobbled thoroughfares, and passers by on their way to work. American author Gregory Maguire said: “The eye is always caught by light, but shadows have more to say.” There’s a special kind of magic about shadows that has always drawn me to them.

7 March, 2017

Pointillism

The unexpected arrival of snow transformed Segovia´s Plaza Mayor into a pointillist painting, which could have been mistaken for the work of Georges Seurat or Paul Signac. A mass of cold air and clouds laden with water had been closing in by stealth on the city all afternoon. Everything was painted white in just a few minutes. I took shelter as best I could under the archways and watched how the city weathered the blizzard. This can only mean that spring is around the corner.

2 March, 2017

Giant watching

Winter has let up for a while. On this February afternoon, the city is bathed in sun, which warms it up for a few hours. Although this taste of spring is just a beautiful mirage, it’s a good time to stop, maybe just rest a while, and take in the overwhelming presence of the stone giant. When I was a child, the incredible strength and height of the aqueduct made me nervous. Now I no longer find this colossus intimidating. I learnt that there’s no reason to fear giants when, after all, the slightest of breezes can move the leaves of the biggest trees in the world.

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