Miguel Angel García

The ten large-scale color photographs from the series "Independencias, produced between 2009 and 2012, are based on panoramic photographs taken by Garcia from culturally symbolic watchtowers in the twenty seven capitals of the European Union, such as the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Acropolis in Athens, St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. Garcia then digitally paints the images, initially blanketing them in white as if seen through a snow storm, which gives all the cities a unified appearance. This is followed by the selective application of red pigment to extract repeating infrastructural details such as smoke stacks in Paris, skylights in Berlin and London, chimneys in Vienna and Stockholm. This combined intervention of concealment and rescue highlights the contradictions between individualism, national identity, and the larger membership in a political union of many nations and cultures. The final prints act as a sort of x-ray of the in-dependencies of all the European capitals. Europa I and Europa II, present an accumulation of all the 27 European capitals in two synthesized, superimposed images, furthering the concept of the European city as part of a common unified dynamic community while at the same time a place for both personal independence and national identity.