carlos pataca :: escaping the obvious

A selection of photos by Carlos Pataca

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Abstraction on stairs 1

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Abstraction on stairs 8

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Abstraction on stairs 9

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lrng wth zl nns (parabéns, pelos próximos…)

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Back to architecture – Amsterdam

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Recorte 20

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Abstraction on stairs 3

– Hello, Carlos. How would you describe this set of images?
– Four of these images are about the possibilities that stairs, as an architectural element, offer to create abstract images. Stairs are sculptures that seduce the eye and are visually very easy to manipulate and transform. I was exercising that. “Back to architecture…” and “Recorte” are more abstract registers of buildings and “Lrng wth zl nns” is an old one that I posted for a friend (Zel Nunes) and doesn’t really “belong” to the series. But in all of them I was trying to escape the obvious of an architectonic register (photography NEVER could represent the experience that someone has when he is in and around a building) and trying to translate the architectonic object in a new “thing”, where poetry was part of the tectonic substance of the photo.


– As a photographer, what do you find interesting about urban environments and architecture? What attracts your visual attention?
– Architecture and urbanism are my work fields. I have been busy with them as a teacher and a designer for 26 years… And photography gives me the chance of commenting, analysing, criticizing and transforming the subject in images while I’m trying to translate what I see in a new experience. Of course, architecture also offers an immense range of possibilities on structures, plasticity, contrasts, colours, tectonics, abstraction, all elements to create great compositions. But just to create a beautiful image does not interest me. The beauty is a bonus. I am trying to reach a kind of “research of the way to see” underneath the surface of the image.


– Which other photographic styles do you like besides architectural and urban photography?
– I am trying everything. I give myself the freedom to exercise in all styles. But I intend to spend more time on abstracts, portraits and still life.


– What motivates you to be busy with photography, what is your goal as a photographer?
– I started to photograph not so long ago, a little more than a year, before that I used just to push a button for a register. But since I start to work less as an urban planner I found photography a good instrument to be connected again with my discipline (architecture and urbanism) and that in relation with my vision of poetry, aesthetics and criticism. I don’t have a specific goal besides the fact that I use photography to see better. To think deeper about what I see and to create images that could translate my way of seeing.


– Do you have a ‘dream location’ where you would like to take photos? Which city would you like to visit for a photo session?
– I don’t believe in dream locations. I do think that our direct surroundings offer enough material to produce good photo’s. But I do have a list of favourite architects of whose buildings I would still like to photograph. In this list I have David Chipperfield, Steven Holl, Wiel Arets, Alvaro Siza, Luis Barragan… it is a long list!


– What is your favourite camera?
– I work with a Panasonic DMC- ZC7 (I don’t leave my house without it, it became part of my body!) and I use also a Sony DCLR A-290. But to speak about a favourite will be difficult because I still haven’t decided to invest in a really good camera.


– Did your photos get published in any photo/art-books or magazines and where do you expose your works on internet (website, blog …) ?
– I still didn’t exhibit or publish my photos. The only place that I post them is on Flickr and Hydepark photography, since short. One of my photo’s was chosen as a cover for a book about city planning and I am waiting for more commissions.


– Thank you and all the best with your photographic work.

Luis Reina a.k.a. lcrf :: on the road

A selection of photos from Luis Reina a.k.a. lcrf

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VACÍO AMARILLO/YELLOW EMPTY

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ABS 6

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Batalla de lineas/battle of lines

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ABS 14

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ABS 2

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ABS 12

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Dogville 4

– Hello, Luis. How would you describe this set of images?

- Since I started my career as a photographer I have a small obsession: to avoid the multiple visual assault that generate a big city. And this fact is not a preconceived attitude, but something that came out of my eyes and, currently, only a psychoanalyst can decrypt ☺. This initial look has evolved from minimalism to abstract. And, in this search of the simplest form, the use of the color also has evolved up to coming to the monochrome color.


– As a photographer, what do you find interesting about urban environments and architecture? What attracts your visual attention?
– The taste for the composition is what attracts me most in urban settings and architecture. In these places I find the ideal set for working with forms and, to obtain this, the city helps me with its buildings, shadows, lines,…



– Which other photographic styles do you like besides architectural and urban photography?
– As a big fan of travel, I like to portray the places I visit. It’s at this point when starts what I call my “adventurer eye”. I like everything: monuments, landscapes, people.



- What motivates you to be busy with photography, what is your goal as a photographer?
– I am a professional in the world of advertising and photography is still a hobby. So my goal is to keep learning and have evolved into a unique style, something really hard to get.



– Do you have a ‘dream location’ where you would like to take photos? Which city would you like to visit for a photo session?
– My “dream location” has to be the city where I live. Only a deep knowledge of the city gives me the ability to reach the maximum abstraction. And this only happens in my city, Barcelona.


– What is your favorite camera?
– Canon has always been my favorite brand. Now I have a Canon D-7 and I am very happy with it.



– Did your photos get published in any photo/art-books or magazines and where do you expose your works on internet (website, blog …)?
– Yes. I publish my photos on my Flickr page, but I’ve also published two books through blurb: 080 and Minimal BCN.


– Thanks, Luis. I wish you all the best with your photographic work.

fernandoprats :: immadencity

A selection of Fernando Prats’ photos from the series he made in Buenos Aires in April 2011. The photo-book ‘Immadencity, Buenos Aires contemporary architecture according to fernandoprats’ is going to be published in July in both standard and deluxe editions.

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Original music: Hypnos by RV

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Nothing like

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An immadencity

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In April

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For rebirthing

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Under new

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Unexpected circumstances

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Like a drunk butterfly

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At the top of its possibilities

– Hello, Fernando. How would you describe this set of images?
– Immadencity is a series of images about contemporary architecture in Buenos Aires, made by request of Red Square Gallery. As a footnote, I’d like to add that all of them were composed and framed during shooting in one day, with a handheld camera, a lens and natural light. Postproduction was conceived as a way of emphasizing the singular, dense and immanent character of the city through a notably corporeal iconography in the area of Puerto Madero, and it is limited to obeying the histogram’s wishes.


– As a photographer, what do you find interesting about urban environments and architecture? What attracts your visual attention?
– Perhaps the discourse of the shapes as a dialogue of power, the composition as a basis for positioning … On a more technical note, the handling of focus and depth of field as selection tools, geometry as a historical statement – although we’re getting less technical here … – spaces as erotic instruments, materials as a poetic weft, sensuality in the details …


– Which other photographic styles do you like besides architectural and urban photography?
– I like all styles because … (jump to the next question/answer)


– What motivates you to be busy with photography, what is your goal as a photographer?
– … I am interested in risk, risk along with the command of tools, both in photography and in any other discipline. Imitating a determined style, whatever the reasons, swim in its surfaces and drink from its as hypothetical as austere springs, must not mean an inconvenient to anyone since it doesn’t even imply any challenge: it’s only about assuming gestures as one’s own. But … the ephemeral and the lack of substance and possible cor/relates show under the auspices of diverse forms, tics that come and go, happily and inexorably towards their fatal, as Jean would say, and irreductible fate, as Oliverio would delimit. The proliferation of non-places 2.0 somehow provides and favours a sort of convex mirror determined to bring back, excuse my words, a priori clichés and, if participants insist, pictures that are blurred, textured, reframed, hyperfiltered, reflected and/or etcetera a posteriori. Maybe that’s the reason why I prefer to think of images more than photographs, or even better fotoworks, neologism that unites under the umbrella of an idea, titles, small texts, tags and links that de-re-signify and question the semantic unicity of a certain image or group of pixels.


– Do you have a ‘dream location’ where you would like to take photos? Which city would you like to visit for a photo session?
– Not a ‘dream’ one, neither a single one. I keep going. Slowly but surely, although sometimes a bit of a rush is OK too. Right now I’d like to go to Mexico and Australia in 2012.


– What is your favorite camera?
– Most of the time I use a Nikon D7000, a Canon 40D and a Casio EX-H10. Some others that have brought me satisfactions, but I have decided to hibernate a FujiFilm S5800, a Nikon S550, and several lomo cameras (Holga 120s, Woca 120, Supersampler, Colorsplash, Actionsampler, Pop9). Currently, my favoutire lenses are Tokina 11-16 f/2.8, Sigma 30mm f/1.4, Nikon 50mm f/1.8, Tamron 90mm f/2.8, Canon 70-200 f/2.8 L and Tamron’s 50th Anniversary commemorative 70-300mm f/4-5.6 Di VC USD.


– Did you publish any photo books and where do you expose your works on internet?
– Yes, some published examples are “Whe(re)n?”, “Shapes and Shapes” (Formas y formas XL), “Formas y formas” and in collaboration with Miguel Ruibal “Objetos Sujetos”. Also collective publications such as “Shadé” and “Shadé II” by Brancolina, Hypo-X-Series, a digital curation by Alan Wilson, White as a colour (for the fight against multiple sclerosis) by Sophie Addison and 1 Navidad, 1 niño, un libro by Escritores Solidarios.

As for online circulation, and leaving aside YSE for obvious reasons, some photographic works were published in magazines such as FILE magazine, U.K.’s Building magazine, And I still miss you or Platform 58, and have been exhibited in Tate Liverpool online, Open Call – Frieze Art Fair 2009, Ambiguities exhibition @ University of Kent, ElPAÍS.com, ****contrasted gallery and on Azurebumble’s blog Aesthetic investigations.

On my day to day, and as a part of what could be called a methodological routine, I publish my work in several social networks, with my main axis on Facebook and Flickr.

More info at fernandoprats.com

– Thank you, Fernando for giving me an opportunity to present a selection of your previously unpublished works and for answering an interview. I wish you all the best with your work!

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English version translated by Alicia Pallas, to read in Spanish please click here

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