Tunel de Gordo Spirits
There a a lot of highway tunnels in Southern Spain. Most are normal passage ways for cars, cyclists and all other manner of human transport. These tunnels are modern in construction – new, well lit, clean and very typical. Just what you would expect from a tunnel.
And then there is the Cerro Gordo Tunnel.
It has never been like the others. Going through it in a car is to take you on a kaleidoscope trip of patterns and shades. Most of the lights blink randomly in the throes of failure and despair.
I passed through it many times on the way to sunny beautiful places on the coast here in Spain. And always in the back of my mind, I thought, I must walk it with a camera someday. And walk it I did with a friend, near the early evening on a weekday (so as not to have too much traffic).
Before I say anymore, let me first say that tunnels have otherworldly acoustics – and know little about the dynamics of sound and how it travels, but I do know that when it travels through a 300 meter curved tunnel the effects boggle the mind. It is completely silent until a car enters on the opposite end to you and you hear it immediately – it starts as a low hum and crescendos as it compresses the air before it in volume and speed. Motorcycles are the best! It’s best if you don’t try to cover yours ears when they intentionally rev up…
I digress.
So this one late afternoon I am looking for an idea to shoot and the Cerro Gordo tunnel comes to mind. It doesn’t thrill me but I am not caring. Vamos!
What makes this tunnel so fascinating is the ceiling – it drips and oozes with patterns and texture; leaky, old, smelly and chaotic evil. There are shades of gray I did not know existed. There is no colour inherent except that offered by the gloomy tungsten lights (the ones that are working anyway).
Staring back at me are alien landscapes and vertigo manifested faces of the weight of the mountain above. They do not look content. They do not look happy. They look tired and foul. And my sci-fi heavy thinking meat found it to be brilliant. My imagination started to run wild; seeing beasts and gods and alien invaders. I recalled books like Dune and the Hyperion Cantos (classics).
Standing in the middle of the tunnel shooting, a car would enter, but I knew I had at least 20 seconds before I had to move. It was like an air raid klaxon – voicing impending doom but still giving one a chance to save oneself.
The raw images could not capture the imagined scenes in my meat processor. So on the computer I continued the imaginings; adding colour, adding contrast and doubling to create my very own passages into my imagination.
Someday they will fix this tunnel with spackle and paint but I know that the spirits of the mountain will once again ooze through.
