About Strange Creatures

The Patagonian Plateau unfolds like an ocean of stone beneath infinite skies, where time seems to stand still and the wind writes its own story upon the skin of the earth. Vast, immense. Desolate? 

Stretching across thousands of kilometers, this region forms the arid heart of southern          Argentina. There are no towering mountains here, but instead ancient rock steps                  terraces descending layer by layer from the Andes to the Atlantic, as if the continent            itself were breathing in reliefs. The soils are poor and tough, covered in gravel, volcanic  ash, and thorny shrubs that survive more through resilience than abundance.

The climate is dry, harsh, and cold. Rainfall is scarce barely 100 to 200 millimeters per      year—and though the sun is often present, it offers little warmth. In winter, frost is                  constant and the wind’s chill cuts like a blade. In contrast, summer can bring searing          heat and suffocating air, wrapping the landscape in an almost oppressive stillness.

The wind blows without rest, with constant strength and relentless direction from the west. The Patagonian winds shape not only the land, but also the mind and spirit. They punish, erode, and mold. Few things grow upright; everything bends, adapts, or disappears. These winds sweep the sky clean, scour the earth, whistle through the canyons, and carry an ancient, almost ancestral echo. In this wind-swept silence, life seems to merely endure,but it thrives, adapting and learning to coexist with the raw, untamed beauty of a land still wild.

The plants have been sculpted over decades, perhaps centuries, by the constant and fierce Patagonian winds. Their creeping, twisted forms are no accident: they are the direct result of an extreme adaptation to a harsh environment. 

Sculpted by the Wind

These twisted forms, open to the sky and the wind, are not dead branches nor scattered trunks — they are native shrubs of the arid steppe, tenacious survivors of a harsh land.With cracked trunks reaching 15 to 20 centimetres in diameter and a low, curved silhouette, these specimens grow slowly but with quiet determination.Every new branch is a silent triumph. The individuals shown in these images are estimated to be between 60 and 120 years old, though some may live even longer. Unlike other wind-sculpted species that cling close to the ground, the molle retains a sense of uprightness, always in dialogue with the wind: bending, twisting, and adapting without breaking.

These plants do more than survive they shape the landscape. Their irregular crowns, sometimes leaning, sometimes open, shelter insects, offer shade to wildlife, and scatter touches of green across the ochre steppe.

At first glance, they might go unnoticed. But when observed closely, the molle reveals its deeper nature: a long-lived, flexible life; a serene beauty born of hardship; a vegetal memory that reminds us nature writes in both time and wind.

Magic places

Sometimes you search and find nothing; other times you find so much without even looking. That’s how I would describe this scene. I was walking among clay hills and small rocks, following the sun towards a photograph I had planned for weeks, almost studied, heading to a point marked on a map without paths. It wasn’t too far nor too close, and while I expected to return with something in my hands, I never imagined it would be this much.

When I arrived, I saw a small hill swept by the wind and decided to climb it. Perhaps there, I thought, I would find the visual line I had been chasing. And it was there, in plain sight, almost as if waiting for me, that I discovered these magical plants. I wandered around, amazed by nature, until I realised the scene I had planned had slipped into the background, a second, even a third place.

With perfect synchronicity, as if in a studio session, the sun and clouds worked together to illuminate these strange creatures. Perhaps it was luck, or perhaps it was simply one of those gifts you find when you learn how to truly see.

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