Cristóbal is one of my best friends. We share an interest in languages and a fondness for precision in word choice. When talking about his work, besides, he often says: "What I am looking for is a language."

I have always been enthralled by his photographs because they are unlike any other photographs by any other photographer. And because I would not be able to make any like them. And for a third reason that I would like to bring up only at the end of this text.

And yet Cristóbal does not like to explain his work and says instead: "My photographs must speak for themselves." Thus the need for this introduction of mine.

I have needed two months to finish this task because these photographs are not immediately obvious to everyone and only become obvious when they are chosen, reproduced and looked at in a certain way. A new language is never comprehensible straightaway. (In his preface to VANITAS, Ignacio Gonzalez, the publisher -and an admirer of Hara's- admitted that he did not expect to sell a lot of copies; and we are talking about one of the most outstanding photographic books ever).

It must be said that, from the standpoint of a professional photographer, Cristóbal does not make his task any easier. Aboard his old Volvo, he sets off by himself to reach certain places in Spain which he visits regularly, on certain dates, usually during some traditional festival. He is unable to use words to describe the object of his search - or perhaps he prefers not to talk about it. Back in Navalon, the village in which he lives (not far from Cuenca and in the neighbourhood of La Mancha), he sends his films (in colour negatives) to a Madrid lab that sends him back machine-made working prints, as in the case of any amateur photographer. Cristóbal makes a choice and, once or twice a year, he goes to Paris to meet his printer who, in his opinion, is the only one who knows how to interpret them and make the prints he wants.

I have sometimes tried to persuade him of the fact that, nowadays, digital technologies yield faster, more precise results, which would be closer to his own objectives. Cristóbal shakes his head, smiling. He can only work in his own way, with his own hesitancy. On the other hand, like many other photographers, he is "digitalphobic". In fact, I have stopped insisting on the subject, and so it is a particular pleasure to know that he is letting me do something that he would not do himself: to put a few of his images on the Web.

I still have to mention that third reason -by far the most important one- for my enthusiasm for Cristóbal Hara. If I imagine a straight line on which to set the works of Cervantes, Calderón de la Barca and Goya (and in my imagination such a line is very precise), my friend's search is placed exactly on the extension of that line: La vida es sueno (Life is but a dream).