A book created in collaboration with Sofía Alemán Arozena, bringing together photographs of Tenerife and Malta.

Where to Go for Sun: The Canary Islands or Malta/Gozo?

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A resident of Sliema, Malta, created a mural using magazine cut-outs beside the entrance to a garage. In front of it, he placed a faux-leather sofa and hung two stuffed toys from ropes, as though they had been executed by a mad king. The result is a strange living room in the middle of the street.

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You move closer to examine the different parts of the crowded collage: Cesc Fàbregas during his Arsenal years, the soap opera Sins, the Virgin Mary, a model in a bikini, a Christmas hamper, a cowboy, Mickey Mouse embracing a group of children, a hairless man displaying his torso, Saint Joseph with the Christ Child, a happy family, a sports car, a cruise ship, and so on.

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Among all these images, two stand out: a tourist advertisement for Tenerife and another for Malta. They refer to places separated by 4,000 kilometres, yet they show the same thing: the promise of happiness just a few hours away by plane.

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According to the advertisement, you can enjoy Tenerife for €849. We see the Auditorio de Tenerife in Santa Cruz, an attractive €72 million silhouette set against the Anaga Mountains. From this distance, the building’s cracked trencadís mosaic cladding, splitting like the shell of a hard-boiled egg, is concealed, as is the supporting pillar holding up its functional crest or wave.

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Departing from Malta, a cruise ship will sail around the Mediterranean for eleven wonderful nights, after which the traveller will return to the small island. Yet Malta itself appears nowhere in the advertisement. Is the country merely a paradise for the pockets of a select few?

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In any case, these two images serve as the starting point for this book: a hall of mirrors between Tenerife and Malta; a loose and fragmented look at places that exist outside the realm of tourism marketing, yet which may be relevant to understanding the character of these two islands, so distant and yet so close.

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The photographs collected here may have been taken with a high-quality digital camera, a mobile phone or an old analogue camera, or downloaded from a WhatsApp group; it makes no difference. With that said, step inside and take a look, because there is little more to add.