To the Moon and Back

To the Moon and back was Life magazine’s headline for the mythical Apollo 11 adventure in 1969. A statement also found on the website of Spanish anti-riot police forces, obviously here referring to a very different mission: ensuring the security of people and also – Mario Zamora’s focus of interest – of goods and social order. The Spanish economic context was shaken by the violence of the last crisis; some voices evoke criminalization of poverty while large urban centers suffered general strikes and sometimes-violent demonstrations between 2012 and 2014, During that period, Mario Zamora turned his gaze to the confrontations, and more specifically to enforcement authorities. He focused on their condition as individuals, scrutinizing their reactions and gazes, recording the distance marked with demonstrators, striving to restitute their body language. A photography that fragments – sometimes to the point of abstraction –, while it perfectly illustrates the correlation between physical and political mastery.