War Theatre
Mikel Bastida
Mikel Bastida – Bilbao, 1982 During the last two years Mikel Bastida has traveled across Western and Eastern Europe recreating the figure of a World War II photographer. He has covered several historical recreations where groups of reenactors have performed different war episodes in both historical scenarios and fictitious battlefields.
This photographic series is a search for those fields that history has turned into literary landscapes. Scenarios made out of different representations of WWII – from films to vintage photographs – which turn into huge sets where recreation and simulation leaves exposed a collective imaginary.
The Photographic Naturalism, the definition of reality from behind the camera, does not allow fictitious characters but imaginary. Real figures transformed into the main character of a false epic representation. Archetypes of a story that has permeated our popular culture to the point of making reality interesting only when it is mystified by its representation.
It is the eye of the photographer who creates this universe through the camera. Spaces and characters that only exist during a photographic moment, fragments of a reality that aspires to mask its ephemeral nature when it is represented.
