Le Verger

A village in Andalusia replanted an abandoned orchard. Tomás Iriarte returned each season for four years. He photographs the trees, the rows, the hands that prune and harvest, but his real subject is the long time of a shared undertaking. Across the plates the orchard passes from bare earth to first leaves, from blossom to fruit, then strips back and begins again. Iriarte holds the right distance: close enough to see the gesture, far enough to read the landscape. He does not praise a return to the land; he documents a collective decision and its patience. Each image supposes the ones before it, as a season supposes the last. The book shows that a landscape is not a backdrop but a labour, held by many, over time. What grows here was first willed, then tended.