TITLE: The last day in the life of Nora Bares

Nora and I were born seven minutes apart. How to describe in a few words my relationship with her without falling into one cliché after another? Complicated. I'll just say one thing that I hope will accurately sum up our universe: we were everything - absolutely everything - to each other.
Nora and I were physically the same except for two details: our navels and our fingerprints. Paradoxically, our characters were opposites.

Over the years, I have read a lot about the supposed telepathy between twin siblings, and now that Nora is no longer with us, it seems even more extraordinary. I have come to understand that this fragile, invisible thread is maintained beyond the confines of this world.

When she first mentioned the idea of taking her own life, I was very angry. No matter how much she argued that there was no drama in her decision, that she was not depressed, for me it was the beginning of an ordeal full of fear and anguish. I will not dwell on my efforts to get the idea out of her head, nor her efforts to get it into mine. In the end she won the game and set a date for her departure.

The series of photographs you will see below were taken by me on the last day I spent with Nora. That day we got up just before dawn, drank coffee and smoked in silence in our kitchen. Later we went out to wander around several of our favourite places. Around 7 p.m., Nora hugged me for a long time, then turned and walked off into the woods. I would never see her alive again. I got in the car, got home and climbed into bed.

AUTHOR: Ximena Bares (Spain)

Photography is a practice that allows me to play as if I were an eight-year-old with all the toys in the world within my reach. In that constant and inevitable play, reality becomes the basis for the creation of situations escaping that same reality by evoking dream-like, sometimes unsettling images. I am drawn to the world of dreams, to human psychology, to the exploration of the different identities we take on to protect ourselves from a menacing outside world and to how individuals relate to their own solitude. The rural environment in which I live, which is at the same time raw and overwhelmingly beautiful, is the perfect scenario for me to become the protagonist of that play in which everything is possible.