Landscape photography became increasingly relevant in the work of Vanessa Winship starting with her series She Dances on Jackson. In this project, completed thanks to the Henri Cartier-Bresson Award she won in 2011, Winship photographed abandoned buildings, desolate landscapes, and the people she found during her journey through the United States with the objective of reflecting disillusion with the American Dream. In 2014, stemming from an invitation from Fundación MAPFRE to develop a project in Spain, Winship decided to focus on the genre of landscape photography once again. Inspired by her reading of Campos de Níjar [Fields of Níjar] by Juan Goytisolo she traveled to Almería in order to visit the place where the writer had been 50 years prior.

Almería. Where Gold Was Found compiles the details that caught her attention in the region’s barren landscape: the shapes of the quarries in Macael, the geological formations on the coast of Cabo de Gata, the Tabernas Desert, as well as the greenhouses and intensive farming plots that had colonized the area. This photograph was taken in a plastic treatment facility in El Ejido, a town whose economy is based on this production method. With this image of a mountain of plastic waiting to be melted down, Winship summarizes the rapid and violent transformation suffered by the landscape in Almería.