Under the title Lurra, we find the fourth collectible photobook by Irene Cruz. In this occasion she collaborates with poet, photographer and performance artist Juan Yuste, and the illustrator María JL Hierro. Each unit can be purchased with a different and unique instant photo at the reader’s choice by Irene and Juan, or wither with an original drawing by María, the edition being limited and numbered with 120 units.

 

"The project is developed as a diary, a collection of moments and things we have lived as if we had dreamed them. Lurra is that feeling of leaving your house to go home. Lurra ferociously awakens our will to live and our survival instinct, and thus, thoroughly looking at each other, they find themselves matching their strengths silent and secretly.  It has been a wonderful experience collaborating with such an amazing pair of artists as they have contributed so much depth… You may see it as just a book, with its covers and pages… but Lurra holds inside a totally 4th-dimensional world, in which both of you are the missing piece."

Irene Cruz

 

 

 

 

"Lurra means “Earth” in Basque Language.

The material with which the earth is made.

The actual planet.

The ground.

Lurra is what resists civilization. The wild one.

The certainty that we come from something, our origins, our solid ground. Knowing that the roots that our feet represent need that gravitational contact.

Lurra is that sensation of how our beginning can leave a mark on us.

Growing towards the tallest grey color makes us different.

Formed from a humid base and a dark roof.

Surrounded by deep green and a morning blue lingering in the air.

The poetry of Lurra is born from an urgency to go back to nature, to our sprouts, our germinal place. In a civilized society where everything is confusing and nothing stays, rules of nature seem impossible to understand due to their sheer simplicity.

It also makes great reference to the abandonment that lies within letting oneself go in what’s known but already forgotten, as well as the violent mark that leaves our homeland on us, the landscape, the light, the scent.

A forge to the personality and psyche of someone who grew up among damp mountains, dark clouds and the sound of streams.

Lurra is the longing of loving that which will never love us back, admiration towards something that rises triumphant before our failures, that will remain when we’re gone. 

Juan Yuste

 

 

 

 

The earth is a big footprint. It is unknown to me who left it. Sometimes I think it’s the earth who steps on itself. And that way it goes on, step by step, staring at rivers die and newborn mountains under impossible and natural pressures. For me, Lurra is a witness, of how I see it or how it lets me see it: wild, cruel and beautiful.

Thanks to this project I’m aware again of where we are (the reason why I still don’t know), who we run into and how we live this experience that has been a gift to us since we were born: Living here, in Lurra.

María JL Hierro