Spanish photographer Juan Aballe noticed that many of his close friends were moving to the countryside. Aballe found himself confronted by the thought – what would life be like if he packed it all in and headed out to the country? In a series of photographs titled Country Fictions, Aballe explores the comparability of imagined pastoral utopias versus reality. Aballe shot in a number scarcely populated areas on the Iberian Peninsula. “In what could be called a collection of daydreams, Country Fictions reflects on the photographic language itself and how we are influenced by previous representations and preconceived ideas about rural utopias” says Aballe. “The illusion of escaping from contemporary society, the naivety and the hopes built around nature come together with the strangeness and the nostalgic look at a life that is not mine.”(source).

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