invicta
This project is named after the experience which it represents. Recently, I've embarked on an enlightenment journey, discovering the meaning of my humanity and with this question my purpose as an "artist" and what it entails as a responsibility to leave behind a legacy.
The photographic medium has been my personal choice just for its immediacy. Before it was a digital culture, it was a great and controversial way to work some took it to portray society and its conditions, others as a tool for art exploration, and not to mention the academic body of work which was created around the medium.
Personally, the diversity of my work is rather confusing than anything else. The immediacy for obtaining imagery is so easy that often one does not think before creating work. During the past weeks, I have questioned my work more often than usual, questions such as "is it good? am I doing the right kind of photography? and the list goes on.
The realization that photography has become a consumer culture trend and that I am part of it has cost me a lot to swallow. I realized that my work was being dictated by the equipment, always wanting to capture the "perfect image" by obtaining the best camera and lenses, the best computer, the best website and trying to keep up with the yearly update of newer cameras.
The conversations were not any more of the intellectual body of work rather whether the software in my computer is good enough or the firmware of the camera is up to date. Not to mention the competitive online platforms nowadays I believe I have no need to mention as we are familiar with them. Everyone takes the best landscapes, the best nudes, stunning commercial work, and is getting impossible to get any better at fashion. (TECHNICALLY SPEAKING)
Youtube is the new University of normalizing minds and creating armys of hundreds of newbies with professional skills, the system is completed saturated because the medium has become normalized, everyone clicks the same formulas and if for a second we look at the general work is very uniform. Studios are controlled by youngsters who are familiar with any source of technology in order to execute any body of work assigned by big clients. Everything is computerised.
Then I had this experience in which for a moment I went back to my photography books and looked at work made by Sally Mann, Joel Meyerowitz, Robert Capa, André Kertész, Nan Goldin, Dorothea Lange, Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton, Man Ray, Francesca Woodman, William Egleston, Robert frank, and Brassai... I could stay here all night and mention them all.
These people, some of them had the very average equipment. However, their curiosity was/is their best tool. Then I thought to myself, I have been doing everything wrong, I have abandoned my curiosity in the pursuit of the perfect and sharpest landscape, for the perfect cloud, or the perfect portrait or having the latest cameras.
Without thinking more I went to the backyard and mounted a perfectly isolated photography studio and played with my curiosity with my personal interest with that one artist who I had lost and for what is worth I spent 9 hours without eating or drinking water nor even sat down and here is the work I came up with in my first studio session.
PLATE-1- Abraham Darby, Lemon, & incarnata
PLATE-2- Abraham Darby, Jasminoides, & Garlic Skin
PLATE-3- Abraham Darby, Jasminoides, & Garlic Skin, Tea glass, lighten from below.
PLATE-4- Abraham Darby, Jasminoides, & Garlic Skin, Tea glass, lighten from below different angle
PLATE-5- Abraham Darby, Jasminoides, & Garlic Skin, Tea glass, lighten from above.
PLATE-6- Abraham Darby, Jasminoides, & Garlic Skin, Tea glass, lighten from above.
