ANNA LOFI

“STONEMASONS AND QUARRYMEN, IN DANGER OF EXTINCTION.
Menorca’s dry stone landscape, an endangered Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity”

If all the dry stone walls in Menorca were put in a straight line, they would circle the globe a few times. When you first set foot on the island, one of the most striking things is the amount of stone you can see in the landscape and the stone constructions that are built there. Menorca is known for its talayots, navetas and stone cities, dating back to prehistory. The island is also known for the walls and other more recent traditional constructions built with dry stone, and for the limestone and sandstone quarries, which sustained the island for a whole century. Today, these constructions need maintenance, but there is no skilled workforce available to do so.

As the name suggests, the art of dry stone or dry stone walling consists of stacking and fitting stones and rocks, without any mortar, to create a structure. Banks, water wells, cattle enclosures, huts, paths… These are some of the dry stone constructions that can be found all over the island. Menorca is a Biosphere Reserve, and the dry stone wall technique creates a balance between the exploitation of natural resources and the respect for the environment. During the 19th and 20th centuries, there was a great deal of activity in the different quarries spread throughout the territory, a sector of activity which is also in danger of disappearing.

In the past, the dry stone technique was used in rural areas, but today this art is applied to the walls of houses and chalets, often using some type of cement or binder to reinforce them. Dry stone constructions do not only exist in Menorca, they can also be found all over the world. In 2018, the art of dry stone was added to the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Currently, this type of construction is considered to be endangered, as there are fewer and fewer masons and there is no generational change-over to maintain this sector. The same goes for stonemasons, who are forced to leave their profession due to bureaucratic and performance issues, and for quarries, who are at risk of being forgotten.

This report has been made possible thanks to the artistic association Es Far Cultural and the stay at Casa d’Artistes in Menorca during the F/16 photographic creation event. This reportage is based on an idea and research by the journalist Carmina Balaguer.

CV

Anna Lofi (López Figueras) was born in Reus in 1993. In 2017, she graduated in Audiovisual Communication from Universitat Rovira i Virgili. She later participated in the Erasmus programme at Université Lumière Lyon 2 in France, from where she worked for Televisió de Catalunya doing reports for the programme Blog Europa. She did an internship at the Photographic Social Vision Foundation, where she participated in the editing and content-creation processes for the dissemination of World Press Photo Barcelona 2015. She recently completed a postgraduate degree in Photojournalism at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

She has also volunteered for several NGOs such as the Fundación Vicente Ferrer in rural India and No Name Kitchen on the Balkan Route, and she worked as a volunteer photojournalist and reporter on the Polish-Ukrainian border.

She has won awards and scholarships through her work, and some of her works have been exhibited in different spaces, such as the documentary and photo story Hijras, les filles dels Kinnars (‘Hijras, the Kinnars daughters’), which talks about the third gender in India and which was screened at the international photojournalism festival Visa Off Pour l’Image de Perpignan 2019, the FILMETS festival, Menorca Doc Fest and Curtàneu, and has been broadcast on TV3 (a Catalan TV channel). Her photo story Llàgrimes de sirena (‘Mermaid tears’), on the chemical factories of Camp de Tarragona, won the 5th Joan Marc Salvat journalism contest and was exhibited at Visa Off Pour l’Image 2021.

Curatorship, production and exhibition design
INSPAI, Centre de la Imatge de la Diputació de Girona

© Anna Lofi