For Joaquín Bérchez, the quarries (pedreiras) of the beautiful city of Vila Viçosa -"Marble capital" in the singular Alentejo region and metaphorical centre of the Portuguese landscape- seem to have been a revelation, which he shares with us through his photographs. Vicente Lleó Canal tells us in the exhibition catalogue how "looking at those pictures, we do not know whether we are in front of an expressionist decoration or Dante’s circles of hell. We do not understand the magnitude of space until we realize that what seems a speck of dust or a blade of grass are actually men or machines, desolate landscapes of abstract geometry which, however, dazzle us with their beauty and, as Friedrich's landscapes, make us aware of our own triviality. Joaquin Bérchez is, in his essence, an art historian, but unlike most of his colleagues, he has, in addition to his erudition, a fine sensitivity and an eye trained in the pleasure of shapes, a pleasure that he shares with others through his camera, teaching us to see with fresh eyes magical realities hidden under the guise of the everyday world. "

In PEDREIRAS, CARNE DE DIOSES, the photographs of Joaquín Bérchez take us into the depths of quarries, nature’s immense jewelled bowels. He transmits us the excitement of their ancient luster, the sparkle that led the Greeks to designate this beautiful stone with the word marmâiro. With his camera he captured quarries in the middle of the extraction process, or in an abandoned state, using abysmal high angles and panoramic views for the titanic vertical fronts. Close-ups of fragments revealing veins and damp, watery threads on soils and muddy feet, illuminate these joys. And as Silvia Escamilla Amarillo and Victoria Domínguez Ruiz write, these photographs disturb our eyes, who "scratch this natural and lifeless material -the marble of the quarries-, showing us their latent vocation. They extract the nature hidden in the stone block and reveal it autonomously with the photographic splendor of this work of art. "

The photographic work of Joaquín Bérchez has been exhibited in several Spanish cities (Valencia, Murcia, Granada, Salamanca, Barcelona, Teruel) and in Italy (Rome, Vicenza, Spoleto, Palermo, Camerino), Portugal (Vila Viçosa, Lisbon) or the United States (New York): Espacios comprimidos, Valencia,2003; Desde la Plaza, Salamanca 2005; Casualidades geográficas, Valencia, 2006; Historiejas americanas, Castellón, 2005; Otro Barroco, Palermo, Granada, 2005; Proposiciones arquitectónicas, Valencia, Alicante, Vicenza, Murcia, 2006/2009; Suite Valenciana, Valencia, 2008; Traer a la memoria, Castellón, 2009; Tolsá, Valencia, Nueva York, 2008/2009; Arquitectura, placer de la mirada, Valencia/Barcelona, 2009; Vila Viçosa, 2011, Lisboa, 2012), Milhojas de historia, Festival Internacional Teruel Punto Photo, 2012. His photographs have been published in various international journals: in a portfolio of FMR (Franco María Ricci, no. 19, Bologna, 2007), in the covers of Annali di architettura publica for eight successive years, or in the AV Project and Arquitectura Viva.