In 2019, photographer Blanca Munt engaged in a neighborhood chat group created to surveil her own neighborhood and alert to any potential home burglaries or other suspicious activity. What is initially presented as an effective tool for the neighbors soon becomes a source of speculation, suspicion and paranoia. The seemingly quiet community life in a neighborhood of well-lit streets and conventional homes founders due to the actual burglaries, but also due to the disintegration of the idea of community when personal security is at stake: mistrust, typically based on suspicious appearance or behaviour, now extends to any neighbors who fail to rigorously conform to the group’s purpose.
With a clean and sober design reminiscent of a real estate or security company brochure, the dispassionate pictures portrayed in Mira-sol Alert intertwine with the mental images stemming from an inflamed rhetoric, which gradually take shape as we learn the self-interested views of the different actors in this landscape –neighbors, suspects, police officers, local authorities–, and which appeal strongly to our fears and contradictions. In her own words, Blanca Munt calls for a “reflection on the tension between the privilege of living in a peaceful place and the constant sense of lurking threat encouraged by our current culture of fear.” -Publisher