Cecília Coca

Mas Adei is a visual essay that explores the lifestyle of Leandro, the author's uncle. Like a field notebook, the camera records regular visits to his home over more than three years.
The work stems from a fascination with everything surrounding her uncle, a world of repetitive routines anchored in the past, inside an increasingly dilapidated house. Leandro, a special person who has always needed family support—first from his mother and now from his older sister, Montse—lives a life marked by strict rituals: at 4 p.m., listening to a zarzuela record; at 5 p.m., playing Parcheesi; at 6 p.m., going for a walk; and at 7 p.m., writing letters and organising his postcard collection. A man who seems to live between the 20th and 21st centuries.
Unconsciously, the photographer's gaze has adapted to the routines of the house, developing its own habits and visual fixations, capturing details that the human eye does not perceive and revealing the uniqueness of this time. Rather than documenting Leandro's life, Mas Adei seeks to observe the relationship between him, the space, the objects and the gestures that define this unique way of being in the world.

Photography seems to stop time. It freezes images in an eternal instant that reminds us of ‘this has been’. We take a photograph and what we have captured is already in the past. The relationship between still images and time is much more complex than it may seem at first glance. A sequence of still images creates a timeline. A before, a now and an after.

Documenting the same scene over the years reminds us of the passing of time. Repeating the same routine day after day does not stop time, but it does give it a certain meaning. Is a photograph a memory or the memory of a memory? Is a memory something we have or something we have lost?
Do we own the things we have photographed? Do we own the infinite images on the ubiquitous screens that we consume blindly and routinely every day?