The tools for combating the speed of today's world are very limited. And few possess the power and, at the same time, the subtlety of photography. Joaquim Seguí (Palma, 1951) demonstrates this once again in his fourth book, Islands and desertswhere he invokes silence and stillness, so absent from our daily lives, through a dialogue between images, poetry, and thought. "We are no longer even capable of reading a book calmly; too often we solve the problem with a distracted glance, which is the exact opposite of what any cultural creation demands," argues the photographer based in Ibiza. "Given this, it is necessary to defend a little rest. We have become accustomed to responding as soon as we receive a..." WhatsApp "And it's absurd. We must be able to think; we can't turn everything into a formality," he says. This idea underlies the more than two hundred pages that make up this new volume, published by Balàfia Postals, which the author will present this Friday, November 21, at Ca n'Oleo in Palma, accompanied by Diana de la de la, editor of Balàfia Postals, as well as sociolinguist Isidor Marí and philologist, actress, and theater director Àngels Escandell. The latter two, in fact, have contributed to Islands and deserts with texts that reflect on Seguí's proposal, which, according to Escandell, is defined as a "sublimation of images and words." In addition to them, other contributors include historians Rosa Rodríguez Branchat and Fanny Tur, and poet Bartomeu Ribes, who oversaw the poetic direction of the work. Thus, the images captured over more than 40 years by Seguí, a cardiologist by profession and photographer by vocation, are presented alongside verses by authors such as Charles Baudelaire, Miquel Costa i Llobera, Fernando Pessoa, Nora Albert, and Iolanda Bonet, to name a few.I was born to know. / That's why I don't want to be taught / to slander the essence of things."," says one of the quoted fragments by Blai Bonet.