Journalism, fiction and reality in Juan José Millás' Todo son preguntas, el ojo de la cerradura, and sombras sobre sombras [Periodismo, ficción y realidad: A propósito de todo son preguntas, el ojo de la cerradura y sombras sobre sombras de Juan José Millás]

In the summers of 2004, 2005 and 2006 the Spanish writer Juan José Millás published a series of articles that later appeared in three volumes titled Todo son preguntas, El ojo de la cerradura and Sombras sobre sombras. His essays are best understood as a meditation about press photos that inspire both questions and answers, expressing a poetics grounded in a spatial conception of the world that explicitly invokes the platonic image of the cave. The writer utilizes literary fiction as a tool to interpret reality -represented here in the series of photos- and, in so doing, problematizes the limits between truth and appearance. It is only by adding shadows to a world replete with simulacra, Millás seems to say, that we can make any sense of the world at all