Responding to the tourist guide's description of the many scenic walks a visitor could make in Rincon, Eva Stenram created Walks 1-12: Puerto Rico via Britain. She imagined the tropical landscape of the island through the most British characterisation possible – a Ramblers calendar of traditional rural walks. Each month illustrated a different typically British scene. From the quaint villages of Dorset to the snow capped highlands of Scotland, the calendar portrays an idealistically beautiful vision of the countryside. Using digital manipulation, Stenram transformed each month's image into a generic depiction of Puero Rico's landscape.
Whilst the Ramblers calendar plays on British stereotypes, Stenram's photographs reveal tropical cliches. Sometimes the changing of scenery is as simple as intensifying the blueness of the sky, adding palmtrees or removing a country cottage. In others the intervention is more dramatic; a mountain becomes a volcano and a tranquil British beauty spot is hit by lightning.
Stenram's visions of Puerto Rico existed before she ever set foot on the island, but look convincingly like documentation of its most exotic locations. Two places so apparently different suddenly seem not so far away from each other, linked by the concept of an ideal national landscape.
Text by Emma Robertson and Roos Gortzak from Puerto Rico 04 – Tribute to the Messenger

Exhibited in PR04 – Tribute to the Messenger, Puerto Rico Biennial, organised by M&M Proyectos, San Juan and Rincon, Puerto Rico, 2004.