Photographer Manuel Alvarez Diestro has created a series of photographs entitled "Living with the Rock", which captures some of the most arid landscapes on the planet. The photographer travelled to Iran, Egypt, Oman and the Monegros to portray unimaginable scenes and environments, showing the relationship between architecture and the geological formations of desert landscapes.

The images show the relationship between human beings and architecture that merges with geological formations. Alvarez Diestro is inspired by the great artists of the Renaissance and how they used stones as symbols of permanence in nature, contrasting it with the impermanent elements of human beings.

Alvarez Diestro is interested in the geological patterns that form naturally in rocks and how they interact with the rectilinear buildings that seem to have been suddenly thrown onto the rocky terrain.

The project was a physical and mental challenge for the photographer, becoming a visual exercise that was difficult to capture. 

«Living with the Rock» por Manuel Alvarez Diestro. Fotografía por Manuel Alvarez Diestro.
Living with the Rock por Manuel Alvarez Diestro. Photograph by Manuel Alvarez Diestro.

During his trip through different countries, he had to get lost in desert landscapes with extreme temperatures to find the ideal locations that we see photographed today.

In one of his sessions, he tells how his tripod broke during a strong heat wave while he was photographing on a rock. This event made the photographer reflect on the fragility of human tools in the face of the forces of the desert and nature.

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Manuel Álvarez Diestro. Born in Santander in 1972, he is a designer by vocation, although his professional life turned around to a marketing and communications company. He loves the creativity,  innovation and the "Branding" of the big brands, which closely follows and is learning every day.

His passion rides between art and architecture and its way of expression is photography. He explores the city with his camera looking at urban landscapes to revitalize, through the image, the appreciation of cities, in their various developments. We can see these images in his latest works "New Cairo", "Pyramids," "Parabolic Facades", "Playgrounds of the World", "Souvenirs de Beyrouth", "Dystopic Songdo" and "Amphitheaters".

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Published on: March 2, 2025
Cite: "Architecture and desert landscapes. Living with the Rock by Manuel Alvarez Diestro" METALOCUS. Accessed
<http://www.metalocus.es/en/news/architecture-and-desert-landscapes-living-rock-manuel-alvarez-diestro> ISSN 1139-6415
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