Ben Roberts: The Gathering Clouds

Old olive groves for sale, Granada. September 2007 Summer has well and truly arrived. Every second email I get is trying to sell me my cut-price but nonetheless VIP place in the sun and thousands are hitting the congested roads towards the south for their annual holidays. This got me thinking about Ben Roberts' series The Gathering Clouds which I came across a few months ago thanks to Dan. Roberts started shooting in Spain on the eve of the global financial meltdown which has now got Spain breathing down Greece's neck in the race for the next European economy to collapse. His series shows the fragility of Spain's construction boom and its strangely desolate aftermath. This is by no means a unique case, but I found these images to be an interesting illustration of Europe's increasing precariousness.