In Timbuktu, in North Mali, Ansar Eddine’s Salafis undertook the methodical and merciless destruction of the Muslim mausoleums, including the one of Djingareyber Mosque. As they are poised to succeed in their fight against Bamako for the control of the North, those rigorist Muslims have turned against their former Tuareg allies. They now impose the strict rules of an Islam they say as pure. Hence, the city of “333 Saints” is no longer allowed to honour the deceased men and women who made its history. Beyond the material lost of these monuments, condemned by Unesco, Ansa Eddine’s goal is clearly the complete annihilation of a whole part of History through memorial terrorism. During...

Philippines is the less Oriental of the Oriental countries, a combination of Eastern and Western cultures. It was a Spanish colony during almost 350 years, from 1565 to 1898 and a colony of U.S.A. from 1899 to 1946. The Spanish (and Hispanic, via Mexico) influence is very evident, emphasized by the Catholic religion, enthusiastically practiced by the vast majority of the Philippine people. Manila and its metropolitan area (Metro Manila) is the 11th most populous city in the world, with around 25 million inhabitants distributed among the old colonial city of Intramuros and the suburbs like Makati, the country’s financial centre. But to know a country is necessary to go away from the...

Since the protest that took place on May 15, 2011 and that gave its name to the movement of the « indignant » (Movimiento 15-M), thousands of Spanish people are camping on the Puerta del Sol square in Madrid. Born just before the municipal elections of May 22, this movement, which has no conventional political structure, claims its desire to oppose itself to politics as it exists in Spain. In a country where youth unemployment reaches 45 %, the people feel they are not protected nor represented by their elected representatives. But without a concrete structure, this movement can only count on its demonstrators’ determination in order to keep its independence from the system it...

« It is not true: the journey never ends. Only travellers stop. And even them, they can get back to it through memories and stories.(…) Go back to the steps they already took, take them again and go new ways. Repeat the journey. Again and again. The traveller always go back to the road. » (J. Saramago) Jose Manuel Navia tells through pictures the story of writer Jose Saramago’s Portugal and Spain, from four of his novels and a travel book he wrote. « Lifted off the ground» and « Journey to Portugal » cover the provinces of Alentejo and Tras-Os-Montes, two of the most authentic ones of Portugal. The pain and struggles of its inhabitants have always been present among Saramago’s work....

Tablas de Daimiel National Park (Parque Nacional de las Tablas de Daimiel) is a nature reserve in south-central Spain on La Mancha plain in the province of Ciudad Real. It is a floodplain wetland in an arid part of Spain created where the Cigüela river joins the Guadiana river. It enjoys international recognition as a wetland on the list of the Ramsar Convention. The European Union designated it a Special Protection Area for birds . It is home to many bird species, some year-round residents, some migratory. Among the flora, aquatic plants are the basic substrate of the Tablas, and the only trees present are the tamarisk trees. It is one of the most important aquatic ecosystems of Spain and...

“Un Madrid Literario” (A Literary Madrid) is a project about my own city, in which I have worked between the years 2006 and 2008. It is an exercise of interrelation between photography and literature, in which I photographically track the mark left in the city by several writers that, from Cervantes to our contemporaries, have written on Madrid. And above all, I track the mark that those readings, as well as my own experience, have left on my own look.

Jamaica is a British island in the Carribeans, founded by British sailors. Nowadays the Rastafarians are the principal sign of identity in Jamaica. They are waiting the return of the Black messiah Haile Selassie, former Emperor of Ethiopia, who they believe will make them go back to Africa, the continent they still dream about. Meanwhile, the rastas let their hair grow, smoke marijuana and play reggae music, in memory of the most universal Jamaican, Bob Marley.

Spain includes 13 cities classified as UNESCO’s World Heritage. Santigo de Compostela, Tarragona, Salamanqua, Avila, Ibiza, Cordoba, Toledo, Segovia, San Cristobal de la Laguna, Alcala de Henares, Cuenca, and Caceres are the thirteen jewels on the Spanish crown. To celebrate the 15th birhtday of their association (“Spanish Group of World Heritage Cities”), the mayors of those different cities wanted the construction of an exceptional vision on their heritage. Asking José Manuel Navia to cross over the country, they let him a carte blanche to draw a dream city, a fantasized city which lives on the most beautiful things in Spain. From Castilla and Leone and its Chrsitian Kings, to...

The Ebro river rises in Pico Tres Mares in the Cantabrian Mountains, in Cantabria, province of northern Spain, and flows for 910 km in a southeasterly course to its delta on the Mediterranean coast in Tarragona province. The Ebro has the largest drainage basin, at 85,500 square km, in Spain. Because it plunges through the coastal mountain ranges by a series of deep gorges and defiles, the Ebro is only navigable upstream for 25 km from its delta to the city of Tortosa. The Ebro's interior basin is arid, poor, and sparsely populated, though irrigation has been intensified between Tudela and Saragossa (site of the Imperial Canal system, begun in the 16th century) and around Caspe. The upper...

This story follows the route between the former colonies of Asilah and Larache, to the north, and Sidi Ifni to the south. the Spanish photographer follow the different waves of colonisation: first Romanian, then Portuguese and Spanish, and finally French. The Marrocan rif protecting the Mediterranean coasts, it's on the Atlantic coast that Navia is tracking down those multiple influences. They seem to express themself on his photographs like games of colours and lights.

The “Song of My Cid” is a Spanish epic poem of the mid-12th century, similar to “La Chanson de Roland” and other medieval poems, intended to be orally transmitted. It is the earliest surviving monument of Spanish literature, generally considered one of the great medieval epics and one of the masterpieces of Spanish literature. The original manuscript of the poem, believed to have been composed about 1140, has been lost; the earliest existing copy, by Per Abbat, dates from 1307. Distinguished for its realistic tone and treatment of the historical setting and the topographical detail, which allows to follow the Cid’s travels over Castile, Aragón and Valencia, the poem interwines the Cid...

Timbuktu, nostalgia for a dream This work is composed of two stories. In the first one, we follow the “Niger bend”, from Mopti to Gao, sailing the river as it carves the huge arc through the desert by using the mode of transport common in Mali: the pinasses and the large boats operated by the Comanav (Compagnie Malienne de Navigation). In the second, we make a half-way stopover to stay in the mythical city of Timbuktu and go deep into the desert to Araouan, following the route of the salt caravans. During the whole journey we follow the traces of the Andalusíes (from Muslim Spain) along the Niger River, and especially in Timbuktu: In the 16th century a mercenary army of Moorish and...

Timbuktu, nostalgia for a dream This work is composed of two stories. In the first one, we follow the “Niger bend”, from Mopti to Gao, sailing the river as it carves the huge arc through the desert by using the mode of transport common in Mali: the pinasses and the large boats operated by the Comanav (Compagnie Malienne de Navigation). In the second, we make a half-way stopover to stay in the mythical city of Timbuktu and go deep into the desert to Araouan, following the route of the salt caravans. During the whole journey we follow the traces of the Andalusíes (from Muslim Spain) along the Niger River, and especially in Timbuktu: In the 16th century a mercenary army of Moorish and...

These photos constitute an exhibition that takes place in gallery of the library Biblioteca Jaime Fuster, from 12 of September to 15 of November, 2006. This is part of a photographic project about the literary territories of Latin America in which José Manuel Navia is working from years. Pays : Paraguay, Mexico, Colombia

For the 50th anniversary of the book "Pedro Paramo" essential work of the Spanish-speaking litterature, Navia is exploring the Mexican territories that inspire author Juan Rulfo in his different novels. Little villages spread in the Jalisco State, South of Guadalajara, Sayula, San Gabriel or Apulco are as many evocating places of an interior Mexico, rural, deep, ancestral. As well as Tuxcauexco, Toliman or San Pedro that inspire the writer for many of his stories.

At the end of the 80s in the middle of the Soviet Union’s disintegration, the Nagorno Karabakh war confronted the Caucasian republics Azerbaijan and Armenia over the annexation of this mountainous region that separates both countries. Armenia won the war and kept Karabakh (an “in fact” solution that is still not recognized internationally for a war which could break out again at any time) but the irreconcilable hatred between the Armenian people, Christians, and the Azeri, Muslims, who had lived together in both countries without any problems up to then, was already aroused. The wealth of Azerbaijan is the oil of the Caspian Sea, the wealth of Armenia is the Diaspora. But inland, near...

The portuguese-speaking world. In many countries portuguese is the mother thongue or the official language. As a consequence, the portuguese language is spoken through the whole world, in South America, Africa, Europe and Asia, 200 millions persons speak portuguese in Asia and Africa. Portugal, Brasil, China, Timor East, Angola, Cape verde, India, Mozambique

In 1976 Spain abandoned the territory that it had occupied as colony from the beginning of the XXth century, leaving it in the hands of Morocco. But the Saharawis, the indigenous nomadic inhabitants of this Atlantic coastal region of Sahara, didn’t accept this situation, with no historical basis. Organized in the Polisario Front (from Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el Hamra and Río de Oro) they began a long guerrilla war against Morocco, based in camps in Tindouf, Algeria. For 30 years the Polisario has been expecting the referendum for self-determination in Western Sahara. But this referendum, proposed and supported by United Nations, is systematically hindered by...

To the south of Bolivia, between the district of Cochabamba and Santa Cruz de la Sierra, we followed the steps of the Cuban guerrilla Ernesto "Che" Guevara, who came to die in this land the 9th of October of 1967 in his last guerrilla adventure. It's possible to go to the places where he spent his last days, to talk with the people who saw him, like the dwarf Virgilia Cabrita, the schoolteacher in La Higuera or the nurse who embalmed his corpse; to cross the ravine where he was seized and go up to the school of La Higuera where he was murdered, or to visit the Vallegrande hospital laundry where his corpse was shown. Che is still a living memory among the inhabitants of Vallegrande and the...