The clock is about to tick into the early hours of Sunday afternoon and El Rastro, the most famous market in Madrid, is as always packed. A crowd gathers in front of second-hand clothing stalls, books wrapped in the perfume of the years and other abandoned objects seeking their future in the home of a new buyer. Each gadget, whatever it is, and with a life of more than 24 hours, has a soul of its own, and the personality of the person who finds, buys or collects it. Alejandra Seijas’ Instagram account was born from this idea. (Madrid, 45 years old), in which he accumulates 136,000 followers. “Life has a lot of colors and El Rastro is a representation of life itself. It is multicolored. “It is my source of inspiration,” she says. influencer from El Rastro.
The interview begins in the Plaza del General Vara del Rey, the epicenter of the Madrid market. Among the impassive noise of the buyers, Alejandra speaks with enthusiasm. The five years that she has been in networks – work that she combines with that of a photojournalist and social reporter for media and companies – have not only helped her accumulate a considerable number of followers, but also to earn the title of “Trace expert.” ”. “You could have a career, yes. I believe that the many years of experience visualizing it, and feeling it, support it.” Not only because of her knowledge of the streets, the vendors or even the waiters at the bars that border the market; that too, but because of the way he feels about it: “El Rastro means many things. It means… color, it means joy, it means hustle and bustle, it means… history, it means… soul, it means… Madrid, traditional, Castilla.”
This whole story begins more than four decades ago. This microcosm has been his source of inspiration for as long as he can remember. And each walk means a new experience for her. “I came with my father a lot because he lived next door. When I was little I loved the animal area on Fray Ceferino Street. There I bought a dog. I called it door, like that of The Doors. She turned out to be a bitch, and I changed her name to Dorinda”. On his first walks, hand in hand with his father, he already felt that it was his special place in the world. “Sundays for me mean trail. My love for this site goes back a long time. Walking alone, focusing on taking photos, capturing people; that’s what I like. And then, of course, around twelve you have a beer.”
“Illustrating, writing and living El Rastro is very simple because there are stories in every corner. This is El Rastro for me.” One of the main challenges for any photojournalist is finding the perfect angle or model, but for Alejandra it is the easiest of all. “What I do on my Instagram I do for the love of art. I have been offered collaborations on many occasions, but I am not a very good salesperson.”
– Where do you put the objective?
– I just walk and observe.
“I observe everything that catches my attention or what I like. I’m looking for the color. At the end of the day, I am one of those who thinks that El Rastro is very personal. It reflects each person’s personality. Maybe, if someone else said it, then they would obviously have a different approach than mine.” But, for Seijas, the color of this place does not come by itself, the most important thing of all is its essence, the one he looks for in every corner every weekend. “The objects here have a unique soul. For this reason, in my networks and in my life in general I do not make new things visible because they have neither soul nor personality.”
And their work is based on this idea: making sustainability attractive as a lifestyle. “I enter a shopping center and I get overwhelmed. I see inert objects that have no life. I see everything dead.” El Rastro de Madrid is a market that was founded in 1740 around the city’s slaughterhouse. After four centuries, it has never lost its essence: resurrecting abandoned objects. “It is present because everyday people come to take a walk, to relax, to forget, to be entertained or to celebrate. And it is the future because of the life that we give back to things.”
The walk continues through the most hidden streets of the crowded market. Seijas greets people non-stop. El Rastro has been essential in his social life, where he has met “great friends and people” whom he has special appreciation and with whom he shares his Sundays, and also his profession. “Writers like Andrés Trapiello who knows stories about this fair that no one knows.” He, who is also a journalist, found in 2019 some notes from Nobel Prize winner in Medicine, Ramón y Cajal, among the old books that he collects every Sunday. Photographer Fernando Maquiere is another of the most iconic of El Rastro. He “Comes every Sunday at nine in the morning with his friends to look for old photographs. They look for their stories. And he records them in his videos on networks. They are the ‘photo seekers’, and also my friends.”
These friendships star in his photo book All Trace Madrid. “The book was an unexpected and very rewarding idea. It was an appreciation of my work that made me feel very good. I spoke to speak with a publisher that only writes books from Madrid. They called me running, they bought my idea. I would never have imagined that they would answer me,” she recalls. A work that he built over the years, and with a lot of work. “I was really excited because they gave me total freedom. It was like saying: ‘This is El Rastro for me.’
As it could not be otherwise, Seijas buys everything he needs here, both his clothes and the objects that decorate his house. She smiles shyly when asked about her favorite item. “I have several treasures from El Rastro. My house is decorated with many paintings. For me they are like windows to other realities. I bought the one I like the most here. It has a white frame and a beautiful landscape. It is as if every morning I wake up in a beautiful valley.”
That the Madrid market has become an object of tourist attraction is not, for Seijas, an impediment to continuing photographing it: “Everyone loves it. Despite having become a tourist attraction, it will always be a hive of creativity.” But what is clear to him is that, for the moment, he is not going to stop grasping it. “My parents have returned to Galicia, to their roots. I love Galician nature, it recharges my batteries. But Madrid is my home and I have a lot of time left here.”
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