Landscapes, streetscapes…not many people

Like many landscape photographers, I instinctively try to exclude people from my images, believing that they can distract from the landscape itself. Yet this photographic habit can create a slightly misleading impression of the places I visit—one that appears empty, quiet, and almost untouched by human presence. In reality, every landscape has been shaped by generations of people: through their buildings, their agriculture, their roads, and the rhythms of everyday life. By removing people from the frame, I may be simplifying the composition, but I am also creating the illusion of a lonelier world than the one that truly exists.

Each year we spend two months in both spring (M1) and autumn (M3) in the province of Cádiz, in Andalusia. Rather than taking the fastest route, we make the journey across Spain by road, turning the drive itself into an opportunity to explore places that many travellers simply pass by. We wander through small towns and villages, follow quiet country roads, and pause wherever a landscape or building catches our attention.

The photographs gathered here are some of my favourites from those journeys. Although people are seldom visible, their presence is everywhere—in the architecture, the cultivated fields, the olive groves and vineyards, the village squares, and the landscapes they have shaped over centuries. Together, these images reflect not only the beauty of Spain but also the rich variety of its landscapes, architecture, and rural life, reminding me that every seemingly empty scene tells a profoundly human story.