Martin Steinbeck

We see a wide shot of the Arizona desert. A man in a dirty suit and a red cap goes through it, while we listen to Ry Cooder’s slide-guitar notes. His name is Travis Henderson and that’s how Paris, Texas starts.

Wenders’ film shows us through the eyes of Travis, a vast quiet landscape with striking images that sometimes are disconcerting and at others, pleasant. Landscapes full of emptiness, strange beauty and meaningful colors that made a deep impact on me. Paris, Texas left me with a disturbing sense of peace.

Since then, I’ve been feeling the urge to look for those mundane landscapes that had become borrowed memories. Empty streets, random corners, abandoned gas stations, dim motels, old luminous signs, endless tracts of land. White walls, red rocks and blue skies with which to create my own memories.

“Who is Travis Henderson?” is my endeavor to rekindle the uneasy calm I felt, while I yearn to go back to those places again.

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book - Martin’s series was recently published as a limited edition photobook by Camera Infinita Books. Highly recommend bagging a copy while stocks last!

We see a wide shot of the Arizona desert. A man in a dirty suit and a red cap goes through it while we listen to Ry Cooder’s guitar notes. His name is Travis Henderson and that’s how “Paris, Texas” starts.

Wenders’ film shows us, through the eyes of Travis, a vast landscape, quiet, sometimes disturbing, sometimes pleasant but always exciting. Full of a strange beauty and color. This movie impacted me immensely and flooded me with a disturbing sense of peace.

I feel that I am Travis Henderson. And that is the reason why I decided to look for those mundane landscapes, invisible to those who travel daily and ignored by mass tourism. Empty streets, corners, gas stations, motels, luminous signs, large tracts of land that cause vertigo and peace in equal parts. Places that have become invented memories and that I try to turn into reality with an innocent and disturbing look.

Photography is like that moment in which, after a family dinner, everyone leaves, the house is silent, you look out the window and you think: fuck, yes!