What did you last take a
picture of?
The last picture I took was of two workers climbing two
huge ladders at the same time. They were repairing some cables that passed
through the city of Barcelona. When I wanted to take that picture I was heading
to the airport and I had to search my camera, because it was deep inside of my
suitcase. This was probably the only moment that I didn't carry my camera
around my neck, because that's what I always do when I'm travelling. I was
lucky they didn’t notice that I was around, so they kept on doing their work in
a natural way.
What mostly catches your
eye?
I think that what catches my eye is when something
somehow seems to belong to the background. The relationship between the space
and the object is what interests me the most. Like when there is a recognizable
contrast, where something or someone doesn’t belong at all, and seems to be out of
context.
Very recently, an
aspiring photographer told me she regarded choosing to be or being a
photographer would be a question of “lifestyle”. What do you think about this?
I completely agree with her point of view. I think
some people are viewers in this world, just like musicians are listeners. The
moment we feel the need to capture those moments in life is when we become
photographers.
What has art to do with
talent?
I think we can develop our talent. But as I said
before, if there is no need to make art and if it isn't in your guts, it will
be really hard to be 'talented'.
What has helped you most
in getting attention for your work?
What helped me the most was making exhibitions and
people like you helping me to show my work.
You also make films. What
are you working on right now?
One year ago I started a production company here in
France called ILKINO. We have been doing some ads, music video clips and films
for companies. Still, I am writing two feature films and hope to shoot a short
film in a few months.
What is ‘Fanzine’ about?
Fanzine is about showing my work in a different way. I
have all these framed negatives and copies that I have to take care of. I was
looking for a way to destroy this idea of untouchable objects so I decided to
make cheap prints to give away every time I make an exhibition.
Which magazines - art
related or otherwise - do you frequently read?
Normally I see many things on the Internet and on
Facebook. I just bought “The American Cinematographer”. But rather I try to see
as many exhibitions as I can.
Where do you go to
unwind?
The beach is a place where I can really relax, and if
not the beach, then my garden.
When looking through your
work, I got the feeling that you often seek to portray persons ‘embedded’ in
their surroundings, or point towards their traces. Is this something that
interests you?
In the beginning, I tried to go
to different places every day. It became an automatism, and the only goal was
to cover the largest portion of an area so I could go to the next one the following
day. At the same time my pictures where 'methodical'. I was looking for
elements that could be found repeatedly in different areas or even cities. You
could say that I even became an image collector. And just like any other
collector of any object, pictures gain value when we have a large quantity and
we can categorize them.
After working in this manner for
some time, I realized that I had spent a lot of time looking for repetitions
and that inevitably, my method had reached its limits considering there wasn't
any human activity involved. My pictures became cold and predictable. I
wasn’t really feeling the places anymore and couldn't relate to the cities any
longer either. But that exactly had always been my starting point.
Even if it took me some time to
realize, the obvious next step for me was to get lost. Instead of continuing to
follow my previous system, I simply started to do the complete opposite thing, which
felt like a situationalist game. I started to wander around without
destination, as a 'flâneur', so to
speak.
Once I did that, I unconsciously
started to realize that somehow my pictures began to have a new feeling to them,
on a completely new level. Instead of being an automatism fulfilled of repeated
objects they became more lively and full of what I like to call “unexpected
finds”.
What I am doing mostly now is
following someone on the street. I don’t take pictures of him or her. I just
use her or him as an excuse to get lost without being me, and without deciding
where to go.
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