“Once Upon a Time, a Traveler” is a project set in the mid-20th century. Using self-portraiture, the artist embodies a solitary traveler who moves through landscapes far from the monumental and the recognizable, places that could exist in any corner of the world. The images show a character dressed in a suit traveling along secondary roads and through anonymous villages, settings that end up revealing who he is.

Carried out entirely alone, the project combines photography, performance, and literary fiction. Each photograph functions as a fragment of a novel that does not exist, or as the promise of a story that never fully reveals itself. “Once Upon a Time, a Traveler” is, in essence, a meditation on melancholy, solitude, and uprootedness, but also on the act of walking as a form of intimate resistance against the acceleration of the present.

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Stadt. That was his last name and it appeared that way on his passport, a document worn out by time and the crossing of borders. Born in a small village in the north, his earliest memories were of green hills and golden fields stretching as far as the eye could see. But his life would take an unexpected turn when, as a child, his family decided to leave in search of new opportunities. That first journey, marked by echoing farewells, foreshadowed a future of ceaseless movement, a life destined to be told in railway stations, lonely trails and cafés in cities around the world.

In memory of José Luis Infante Faura, tireless flâneur