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Around Autumn 2020 I was asked to be part of an exhibition in girona with three more Photographers in La Fundacio Valvi (Girona)

Overwhelmed that someone asked me to be part of an exhibition, I guess I felt deliriously happy and my ego was flying around the house like a unicorn. I never had my pictures printed, I never imagined someone would be remotely interested.

Blau Cel

Blau Cel

Photography it’s something I took on when I could not longer paint with oil. Since I have been clean I have to find ways of letting out all the triggers, all the anxiety and evry word I don’t know the meaning of. Photography is just a way to let off some steam, to fill in a hole that sometimes gets a little bit healed.

It was always a way to be just myself, away from a spinning brain, arguments, routine, work, no work, volurary work, away from everything and everyone. In a way trying to find a personality that has been lost. Growing up means not taking myself too seriously, knowing I am living on a borrowed time.

The Hob

Once upon a time I had a ‘creative’ job that cost me almost or better phrased, cost me my life (physically speaking and the loss of any normal connection.

All was burned with a slow fire that as mesmerising it was left a very bleak landscape and so after that I woke up in a different country where I didn’t even know how to speak, with nothing much but a terrible headache. And so I started walking at the opposite direction I came from. It is not running away, anything but that.

It’s like getting into a sanitiser room.

And back to this…. when I was asked I was so confused because my confidence and that life was over and I never expected that. Now I am a little bit of a sociopath that for whatever reason I like to be accepted. And I couldn’t say no. I am glad I said yes because for once I felt so proud when I saw that hanging on a wall. And because to be able to be around people in the same wave length makes me feel so, so alive and happy and complete. I shared the Fundacio valvi with Jaume Geli at the helm with Jaume Llorens who I admire profoundly, his little pictures a diamonds that have depth and light, Sergi Batlle also printed and exhibited before and Mercedes Werner a very tough and solid photographer.

The Big Bang

All started with taking pictures of my kids with a mobile and the save up to buy a Canon EOS and then saved for a Canon EOS Mark IV with three glasses. 85mm. 100 Macro and 24/70mm.

Pandemic made me almost sick of DSLR and Computer editing so I took on Darkroom and now I am a proud owner of a NIKON FM3a with a 65mm Voighlander glass and a Hassleblad 500cm with a 120. That´s it.

The Exhibition was born from the idea of trying to be me, or as close as I could be, away from any influence (called a father figure, a trend or anything) just my intuition and try to find the best printer I could find, someone I could trust, that gave me confidence, experience and room for mistakes. That was Ferran Gimenez, a true gent that guided me through the process of composition and colour.

One thing is to put a picture on social media (Instagram, Twitter or this web) but a very different story is trying to imagine this little pieces of puzzles and games to a wall. A Wall is scary as hell.

My work has never made any sense, I never wanted to have any sense or personality, it has always been intuitive and a quick entertainment a way to scape from the burden.

So the logistics came to life, a good quality picture (think pixles) that could be printed as big as possible, I am not Cartier Bresson or Michael Kenna to expose small. I wanted big and I wanted colour. Then the frames came to live, they don´t have a style, they don´t have a narrative, they do have my intuition and my colours.

My photographs come from ordinary moments, I have never wanted to go to Iceland or Tibet, I find that in me an impossible task, I can´t put into a frame the glory of a real landscape.

Yet daily life amazes me, washing my induction hob with white sope makes me happy for a few minutes, it looks divine. The sea when the waves come and go and wash you and take you away for a few minutes, Or when my daughter gets ready for a portrait, i prefer that instant than the pose, I like those little moments, thast ugly plant the people ignore and never crop from a dog walk. A snow ball thrown into a frozen river …Those little frames make my life joyous.

To see that on a wall, when all the work was done on a table gave me so much emotion I had to cry. I nerv saw my pictures printed but to see them big was a rather surreal moment, It feels like they are from someone else, not me.

Fotos de Claudi Valenti, Tino Soriano i entranyables convidats. Live music was perfomed by Toni Pujol and Tati Cervera that played a magnificent version of Dat Dare among other tunes.

Press and TV:

Television 19/5/2022 TV3

Online Art and Photography Mag. Sichtbar.Art

Newspaper :10/05/2022 El Punt Avui+

Digital Art News 13/05/2022 Bonart

I hope if you go you enjoy it as much as I have.

Birth

Let me take you to a unique universe where reality and time disappear. Where rush and reason don’t exist. Only an emotional dialogue between our intimate core and the mirror of those emotions, this is where Lidia Masllorens work lives.

I was asked to go to her studio and try to portray the feeling of her work and her. It was a very special moment but also frightening because since Christmas I just could not find or feel any creativity nor inspiration in my work and I was stuck into organising my back catalogue, it’s useful but not very satisfying. I felt like I didn’t have anything else to give, Winter can be dull when the light is flat and bi-dimensional. So I was terrified.

Only needed to move there and hope for the best, say yes and go for it, Doing a short trip to my home country was enough really. The sun just burns into your eyes and the blues become so vibrant, the sand almost red brick and the brain stops to think and the heart starts to breath.

Lidia’s studio is her universe, it’s unique and it’s a mess, mess everywhere, and yet every brush, every cable, every wall it’s a click from my camera, her expressions of discomfort when she doubts, her tiredness, her laugh, her generosity all become clear in her final work, but they are also her and you at the same time, a mirror. Dirt becomes beauty or more like she tries to debeautify our world.

Art first sight her work seems like a pretty cartoon, when you look close her work is full of texture and it’s so much depth you get lost into it.

I just love her as a person and her work which by her words is also us and how we see ourselves. One Art critic thinks she is like Manolo Valdes in a sense that she deconstructs reality and that is accurate.

I hope this pictures can transmit just that.

Girona

´I tornaré a Girona
Quan bufi tramontana
Per perdre’m en silenci
Pels vells carrers que enyoro. 

I tornaré a Girona
Sense esperar que em cridin
Amb tremolor a les cames
I els ulls oberts com llunes. 

Serà un dia de somni
Quan tornaré a Girona´

Miquel Martí i Pol

Henry Moore Up Close and Personal

Henry Moore is one of those artists that the more I revisit his work the more I have come to love and admire, at first I just saw the scale of his pieces, striking, sexy and unique voluptuous curves that balance perfectly with its surroundings. Yorkshire Sculpture Park is a place so huge where his work breaths and looks intimate and where solitude feels like a gift.

Long gone the days where I no longer shot a whole object, building or person into the frame all squeezed up. Moore invites you to look deeper into his forms and get lost between the work of nature has left over the bronze all over the seasons. It's beautiful, i cant find another word, but i hope that this picture represent a little bit what I am trying to say.

I hope you enjoy them and I am sure next time I go will see a completely different angle and curve, thats his beauty, it's infinite inspiration.