スペイン人フォトグラファー、ジョン・カズナーヴ（Jon Cazenave）が8年前から取り組んできたプロジェクト「GALERNA」の最終章。バスク地方の人々の特異性や審美観をヴィジュアルで撮り集め、人類学的な視点で彼の故郷の政治的な複雑さを紐解くような1冊。歴史と魔術が詰まった領域の境界を探り解明する中で、作者が世界の奥深い領域に潜り込んで撮影したイメージは、現代の我々に先祖伝来のスピリットと自然との関わり方を提示しているようである。

AMA LUR is the closing chapter of Galerna, an investigation project that Jon Cazenave embarked on 8 years ago. In the course of these years, the artist has compiled a visual repertoire of the Basque people’s idiosyncrasy and aesthetics, in an attempt to unravel his homeland’s political intricacy from an anthropological perspective. Harking back to the Late Stone Age, Cazenave focuses his inquiry on the symbolic and ritualistic world of cave paintings on both sides of the Pyrenean watershed, reinterpreting the traces left behind by the human beings who inhabited that environment. AMA LUR thus challenges the notion of the border and reveals a territory loaded with history and magic. Delving into the Earth’s deepest recesses, Cazenave connects us with a universe that appeals to humankind’s ancestral spirit and to our balance with nature, a belief system that still guides us to this day.