Agony in the Garden

“I am always trying to somehow go beyond the individual, to create a more mythological feel where the images relate to a bigger picture, something more universal,” Lúa Ribeira said about her series, Agony in the Garden, now published by Dalpine as her latest a photobook. 

Following her first book, Subida al cielo, Ribeira collaborated with young people in the peripheries of Madrid, Málaga, Granada, and Almería between 2021 and 2023, exploring her interest in contemporary counterculture scenes and online universes, particularly trap and drill music. Her carefully composed visual landscapes and hyperreal scenarios translate a disconnect, evoking the disquieting unease of our era.

“Over the past decade, I’ve been inspired by the ways younger generations articulate themselves — through expressions, images and gestures that are increasingly global and acutely attuned to the alienation of our times,” says Ribeira.

Wastelands of trash, a McDonald’s advertisement foregrounding a set of apartment blocks, obscured faces, and suspended gestures all encapsulate moments that are both relevant and out of time, situated and displaced.

Ribeira’s series captures a certain uprootedness both chronologically and metaphorically: an image of a young man smiling with a bloodied nose appears next to an image of a statue of Jesus with bloody knees and feet, a biblical reference — as the book’s title — to the ominous moments in the Garden of Gethsemane leading up to his crucifixion. 

Arid landscapes with ancient mountains are coupled with symbols of modern consumerism and fields of plastic, while youth film each other with their smartphones. Through these dualisms, Ribeira closely investigates a feeling of carnal restlessness and unspoken tension, as if the characters are living in contained extremes.

For Ribeira, leaving her images to speak for themselves without testimony or explanation removes contextual barriers, allowing the photographs to reach their full potential for each viewer. 

“I tend to remove some of that contextual information, and focus more on gestures and basic actions or postures – with the aim that some of those particularities don’t function as a separation between the person looking at the work and the person that is in the photograph. And, in fact, the representation of the gestures or expressions functions more as a kind of mirror of our human condition.” 

Through her extensive research, Ribeira’s series explores generational angst in a time of material overproduction, institutional violence, and financial, migratory and environmental crises.

With an interplay of soft and direct light, muted and striking color, Agony in the Garden reconfigures universal notions of uncertainty and suffering as a heightened visual allegory of the present. 

Shop Agony is the Garden at the Magnum Store here.

Ribeira is one of the three mentors on this year’s Magnum Summer Course in Marseille, France, from August 9–28. Find out more here.