Hythloday by Norberto Fernández Soriano
Hythloday is a body of work that draws from one community’s fight against fracking, and presents their experience and beliefs through a visual interpretation of what is positioned between fact and fiction. In the United Kingdom, the trial site for hydraulic fracture-fracking for shale gas – and its potential for national rollout and future commercial exploitation - is located in the countryside between the cities of Preston and Blackpool. A mile down the road from this site, a group of activists - known to the local community as ‘The Protectors’ - set up camp, where they lived and fought to stop this fracking trial.
In what might be described as a “photographic novella”, Hythloday transforms this physical place into an imagined post-fracking scenario, in which the activities, causes, fears, effects and thoughts situated in this place constitute a potential future landscape. Hythloday draws its titled from the name of the sailor in Thomas Moore’s Utopia, which is used as a means to explore and understand the place itself, as well as ‘The Protectors’ fight. Hythloday combines the characters and elements on the ground with the mood to create a journey through an unknown and strange place that reveals the tension between those protrayed and the land they inhabit.
Bio
Norberto Fernández Soriano (1988, Spain) is a visual storyteller and book-maker. He uses photography to explore and interpret the world he inhabits, creating a common ground between contemporary social issues and his own life questions.
Having previously studied Chemical Engineering, his scientific background and self-taught approach to photography has led him to investigate the narrative possibilities of the medium. He is currently studying for a Masters in Photography at University of West of England (UWE Bristol) - his work has materialised in the form of the artist-book, Hythloday, and will be exhibited at the Martin Parr Foundation in 2020.
www.norbertofernandezsoriano.com