With his striking new book Mallorca: Island in Progress, German photographer
Marc Räder has landed on a Spanish island known primarily as a Mediterranean
holiday hot spot. Over the course of four years, he watched the drastic changes
of landscape and architecture, and the annual fl ow of some ten million tourists
over the island. Like an archaeologist, he digs with his camera through the
diff erent decades of a paradise being changed by the parameters of global
capitalism. Räder’s “docu-fi ction” style turns the ordinary landscape into pictures
which resemble fantastic architectural models, putting into question the veracity
of his medium. The island of Mallorca has become a laboratory of tourism, a
temporary paradise: a European melting pot which struggles from overusage,
environmental destruction, and growing demands of established and recentlyarrived
inhabitants.