Alberto Feijóo

Alberto Feijóo

Alicante, Spain

flickr  website blog

What can be reasons for you to choose analogue over digital photography?

I began using analogue; I learned everything about photography using film cameras.

On your website you show three different projects. Which of them would you say did you feel most devoted to while working on it?

The most important project for me is "Life is for Everyone" because it has taken me a long time to develop this series. I got to know a lot of interesting people, but most of them don't appear in the pictures. There are hard stories behind each person.

Both "Life is for Everyone" and "Walk Again" each have quite distinct and complex conceptual foundations. Are these likely to change in the course of the project, or do you rather set up guidelines to work with and stick to them strictly throughout the whole work?

I use guidelines sometimes, I make a kind of list about what I want to find. I read a lot and sometimes I find really interesting things like the work of Rabindranah Tagore: his work pushed me to make “Life is for Everyone“.

But sometimes I take pictures and after a while I develop the film and I see what I did. When I see their connections I start to make a series by assembling the pictures accordingly.

Are these two ongoing works of yours, or have you started new ones?

I have started a new series about group therapy. All the pictures were taken in London this summer. It's a kind of fictional project, like “Life is for Everyone“: so in some way it could be seen as a second part to that project.

Also, I'm making prints now in the laboratory in Madrid and trying to find common things between pictures; for instance colours. For me, colours are very important.

And are the pictures in "untitled" simply a miscellaneous collection of other pictures?

“Untitled” is a "game": it depends on the image that you click on for which images will follow: according to the image you choose the subsequent ones will differ.

From your point of view, photographers are collectors of...?

Photographers are collectors of luck.

Why do you think people often don't like to look at pictures of them?

Because pictures are a part of you, like one of your arms, or your belly button. It's difficult to accept yourself just as you are.

From my point of view: I need to see pictures of me in order to realize what I'm doing and what or who I am: seeing pictures of myself is a hard exercise, but you have to do this. It is self-criticism.

What goes through your mind when you pass by regular photography studios and see all those wedding pictures etc. in their displays?

On the one hand it's depressing. But, on the other hand, these pictures show me what I am not to do.

In percentages, how would you distribute between equipment, expertise and luck each their importance to the final outcome of the work?

Luck is a very important thing; I have to say that I consider myself a lucky person. But from my point of view, you have to work hard on the ideas, too, and be yourself. Nowadays we have high technology in our hands, but this technology shouldn’t take over the power.  I would distribute it like this: 30% luck, 50% ideas and 20% equipment.

What was your biggest disappointment/surprise in cinema so far this year?

Avatar was a swindle.  I think it’s a perfect example (and it's happening everyday) for high technology being at the service of a poor idea.

Conceptuality. Take a look at his work!