ACROSS CALIFORNIA — From its beaches to its deserts and mountains, from its lakes and forests to its small towns and big cities, there’s just so much to see in California! And we got to thinking: Why not share the photos we receive, and see elsewhere, with you?
Thanks to several Patch readers who’ve been very busy lately with their cameras, we’re able to share the below photos taken across the state. Take a look at this week’s “California In Photos” for glimpses of daily life and scenery up the coast in Northern California and down the coast in Southern California.
It’s Your State, It’s Your Shot!
It’s your turn, photographers. Whether you’re an amateur, a professional, an Instagrammer or just the one who always has their phone or camera ready so as not to miss that perfect shot, we’re excited to view and share your work. If you have an awesome photo of nature, breathtaking scenery, kids caught being kids, a pet doing something funny or something unusual you happen to catch, we’d love to feature it here on Patch.
We’re looking for high-resolution images that reflect the beauty that is California and that show off your unique talents. Share your best photos with Patch and your work could be featured in your community as well as in this weekly collection of California in pictures. Email your submissions to [email protected]. Be sure to include your name, the city, location of the photo and date.
Did you miss our most recent “California In Photos?” It is worth another look:
The City Nature Challenge, a citizen science initiative, was co-founded by the Natural History Museum of LA County and the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco in 2016 as a friendly city-to-city “competition”
Observe the animals, plants, and fungi around LA and share photos of your finding in iNaturalist
April 28 through May 1, 2023
Pausing to watch a spunky little lizard scurry along the top of a gate? You so will.
Stopping to admire an iridescent hummer humming around a brilliant red hibiscus? Without question, that’s happening.
Sitting down in order to see the sun dapple through a particularly fetching jacaranda? There go your next 20 minutes, for sure.
You are connected with the world around you, and deriving joy from the flowers, animals, and natural sights around you is something that occurs each day.
But what if you could still engage in those pleasurable activities while also aiding the knowledge of the science community?
That mission is at the helpful heart of the City Nature Challenge, which begins its four-day run on April 28.
Will you need to register to join in?
You will not, and your participation can be as quick as a minute or two or as lengthy as you’d like it to be.
Founded by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco in 2016, the annual event simply asks nature lovers this: Can you snap a quick pick of a flower, critter, or some fungus and submit it via the iNaturalist app?
That photo, plus the area it was taken and a few other details, will serve researchers who are eager to know more about the wilder realm that weaves through our human existence.
Feel free to explore your yard, your neighborhood, a local hiking trail, or any other place where nature may be found, well, nature-ing.
Cultivated flowers and planted shrubs? Skip these, as lovely as they might be; you’re seeking out the naturally sprouting flora in your area.
Something pretty nifty?
While plenty of observations will “match” other entries — numerous people will spy the same species over the weekend — each City Nature Challenge sees a number of rare animals or plants, the sorts of sightings that make headlines. (By the by, submitting pictures of more common critters or trees is important, too, so go for it.)
Happy nature-loving, nature lovers, and thanks for lending a hand during this important, get-out-in-the-sun fun time, a great way to bask in the fresh air while basking in the knowledge that you are supporting science.
Ansel Adams created some of the definitive photographs of the Western American landscape long before climate change threatened to obliterate it forever. Born in San Francisco in 1902, Adams is best remembered for his lush black-and-white pictures of the Yosemite Valley and the Southwest, as well as for his role as an educator who influenced generations of photographers after him.
Now, the de Young — the site of Adams’s first exhibition in 1932 — hosts “Ansel Adams in Our Time,” a major retrospective organized in partnership with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, examining the artist’s legacy in relationship with the work of 23 contemporary environmental photographers breaking new ground in the genre.
While the exhibition is full of iconic Adams shots, like “Clearing Winter Storm,” c. 1937, or “Moon and Half Dome,” 1960, both made in Yosemite National Park and many deep cuts, the artist’s work is only a jumping off point.
Richard Misrach’s “Golden Gate Bridge” series, shot from the back porch of his home in the Berkeley Hills, responds directly to Adams’s “The Golden Gate Before the Bridge,” 1932, a breathtaking view of the mouth of the Bay between the Presidio and Marin Headlands – sans bridge. Mark Klett implements collage to converse with Adams and other seminal landscape photographers. The titular view of “View from the handrail at Glacier Point overlook, connecting views from Ansel Adams to Carleton Watkins,” 2003, photographed in color by Klett, is overlaid with collage elements snipped from Adams and Watkins’s earlier black-and-white pictures.
By returning to the source, both artists play to photography’s chronological promise, revealing how much – and how little – has changed.
Others are more concerned with interrogating the act of looking itself, challenging the ubiquity of the White male gaze. Catherine Opie’s landscapes, like “Untitled #1 (Yellowstone Valley),” 2015, respond to and contradict Adams in almost every way: colorful and completely out of focus. Binh Danh’s daguerreotypes of Yosemite, a printing process using a highly copper surface, mirror the viewer in the image.
Both Opie and Dahn’s pictures raise the question of how who looks changes what they see, placing the viewer inside the landscapes they photograph. In fact, the traditional absence of humans from many landscape photographers’ work, including Adams’s, presents a bit of cognitive dissonance: The human footprint is increasingly present in nature, from population growth to climate change, while the particular absence of people in Western landscapes carries colonialist connotations. What you don’t see is just as important as what you do.
Some photographers of Adams’s era attempted more ethnographic projects, like Adam Clark Vroman’s 19th-century playing card sets, illustrated with photographs of Native Americans and sold as souvenirs. Contrast that with Will Wilson’s contemporary portraits of Native Americans like “Nakotah LaRance,” 2012, a young man carrying a portable video game system and a comic book, or Wilson’s own self-portrait “How the West is One,” 2014. Wilson’s diptych represents the artist on both sides: on one, Wilson is dressed in Indigenous cultural garb; on the other, he’s dressed like a cowboy, each staring gravely into his reflection’s eyes. Here, we get a clear view of what’s missing from the supposedly objective presentation of the hauntingly empty landscape.
While Adams’s vision of the West became ubiquitous, it was itself far from objective. Credited with several advancements on the technical side of photography, he studiously crafted many of his images post-production, often combining multiple negatives and using all the darkroom trickery available to him to create impossibly breathtaking views. These technological experimentations were cutting edge at the time, and his work continues to be at home in the company of similarly daring experimenters.
Chris McCaw and Meghann Riepenhoff both play fast and loose with the negative, accentuating the illustrative — even painterly — quality photography can possess. McCaw, who builds his own giant cameras, outfitted with periscope lenses, makes long-exposure photographs in which the trajectory of the sun burns its way across paper negatives over time. Riepenhoff’s pieces are contact prints made by exposing photo-sensitive paper to various natural phenomena, like ice, in addition to light. It’s a level of integration with nature Adams never achieved, embedding nature into their work in an inversion of human’s impact on their
environment.
In one of his rare, urban landscapes, “Housing Development, San Bruno Mountains, San Francisco,” 1966, Adams turns his own lens on the direct impact of development, a zigzag of prefab homes tearing through the hillside. Compared to Adams’s earlier nature shots, this feels like a slap in the face, forcing the viewer to confront the degradation of the landscape. There’s a way in which all of Adams’s photos could be considered depictions of humanity’s impact on the land, and the continued impact on the land is fully displayed by his contemporary counterparts.
Mitch Epstein approaches environmentalism through absurdism. In “Altamont Pass Wind Farm, California,” 2007, the arid wind farm serves as a backdrop for a group of golfers playing on the green course that abuts it. “Signal Hill, Long Beach, California,” 2007, offers a scene of an oil pump wedged between homes in a suburban neighborhood, showcasing the intersection of industrial greed, urban sprawl and willful ignorance. Laura McPhee’s diptych “Early Spring (Peeling Bark in Rain),” 2008, is a view into a dense forest of burned trees, the soot-black bark of each trunk peeling away to uncover new growth beneath. It’s a heartbreaking record of wildfire damage, with a hint of a promising future.
The beauty of the natural world has grown bittersweet. Every picture in the exhibition is gorgeous, sublime enough to teach the Hudson River School a lesson, but they’re hard to look at without recalling recent and increasing environmental travesties in the Bay Area and beyond.
By avoiding the sort of didactics often present in climate activism, Adams and company remind us what we have to lose by showing us why we love it, doing so without sacrificing any of the complex dynamics present in humanity’s relationship to the land. These pictures aren’t for posterity: they’re a reminder that time is running out.
From turkey tail mushrooms to spiny softshell turtles, Londoners have already spotted more than 4,500 different species in the city through a nature-tracking app — including some rare and at-risk.
And that number is about to grow.
For the first time, London is joining a four-day global challenge to get more people out in nature documenting animals, plants and fungi to help scientists better protect rare and at-risk species and their habitats.
It’s all part of the City Nature Challenge running from Friday, April 28 to Monday, May 1. People can join in by taking photos and sound recordings of species in nature using the iNaturalist app — or by taking part in 18 different guided hikes in London, from bird watching to identifying trees and nocturnal insects.
The challenge is to see which participating city can make the most nature observations. This year, 42 municipalities are participating across Canada, and more than 450 cities around the world.
Kari Moreland is a biology professor at Fanshawe College and an organizer for the City Nature Challenge in London. (Michelle Both/CBC)
“Scientists can’t be everywhere, particularly in Canada,” said Kari Moreland, biology professor at Fanshawe College and organizer of the City Nature Challenge in London.
By collecting data on the app, the public helps scientists track biodiversity trends over time, detect invasive species and monitor rare species and their habitat, she said.
“We’re lucky in London that we have a lot of important ecological habitat,” she said.
Using the app is an easy way to learn how to identify plant, animal and fungi species and learn what’s around you, Moreland said. Just last week, an endangered red-headed woodpecker was spotted in north London, she noted.
Documenting nature is a way to ‘give back’
Canada has cataloged more than 50,000 wild species — and more than 2,000 of them face high risk of being wiped out, according to a Wild Species 2020 report.
In southern Ontario, we have some of the most biodiversity in the country, said Brendon Samuels, a PhD candidate in biology at Western University and on the organizing team of the challenge.
But it’s declining because of human activity and habitat loss, he said. That’s where this data can make a difference.
Brendon Samuels, PhD candidate at Western University and coordinator of Bird Friendly London, takes a photo of an American sycamore tree at the Coves in London. The photo is then uploaded to the iNaturalist app to help track biodiversity in the region. (Michelle Both/CBC)
“A lot of folks are worried about the environment,” he said. “Being able to document nature and participate in stewardship is a good way to give back.”
Samuels has used iNaturalist data in his own research studying the problem of birds crashing into windows and buildings, he said.
“Collecting community science data, especially in urban environments like London, helps us to take better care of the natural heritage that we have here, so we have a sense of what is occurring in a given park or environmentally significant area,” Samuels said.
“That is really useful information for helping us to take better care of our relationships with those species,” Samuels said.
Brendon Samuels says documenting nature on citizen science databases like iNaturalist helps scientists design more effective measures to protect habitat for species. (Michelle Both/CBC)
As people are concerned about losing habitat to things like development, the data helps get a better sense of what lives in any given area of the city, he said. “Then we can design more effective measures to protect that area.”
The iNaturalist app is really intuitive and simple for people to use, he said. It can be used on a smartphone or a computer, and a tutorial is available on their website.
Samuels will be leading hikes as part of the events through Western’s Biodiversity Inventory and Bird Friendly London. Upper Thames River Conservation Authority, Nature London and ReForest London are a few of the other groups leading hikes and events as part of the challenge.
Londoners uploaded more than 4,500 nature observations to the iNaturalist app in London including turtles, turkey tail mushrooms and a moth. (iNaturalist)
“The City Nature Challenge is only a few days, but you’re always able to contribute to community science throughout the year, even if it’s just in your backyard,” said Samuels.
In 2022, nearly 77,000 nature observations were made of 4,551 species across Canada through the app.
Fanshawe College is hosting the challenge in London along with the Biodiversity Inventory at Western. The City Nature Challenge started in 2016 in California.
The Wichita Falls – Rolling Plains Region will host its third City Nature Challenge April 28 through May 1. Participants are encouraged to go outside in the community and take photos either with a smart phone or digital camera, then upload them at iNaturalist.org or save them on the iNaturalist app.
All observations of living things, such as wildflowers, insects, or any wild living organism, made on these days in the 10-county region around Wichita Falls will be added to the region’s project, according to a release from the organization.
The goal is to document species found in the region to help scientists who study these species learn more about where and what type of organisms are here.
The City Nature Challenge is sponsored by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the California Academy of Sciences.
For more information, go to the Rolling Plains Chapter of Texas Master Naturalist at [email protected] or visit https://www.citynaturechallenge.org/.
The Hubble Space Telescope snapped a stunning new photo of a nearby star-forming region to celebrate its 33rd launch anniversary.
Located only 960 light-years away in the Perseus molecular cloud, a reflection nebula known as NGC 1333 harbors hundreds of newly forming stars. Hubble peered through thick clouds of dust and gas, including cold molecular hydrogen, which is an essential element for the formation of stars and planets, according to a statement from the European Space Agency (ESA).
“Hubble’s colorful view, showcasing its unique capability to obtain images in light from ultraviolet to near-infrared, unveils an effervescent cauldron of glowing gases and pitch-black dust stirred up and blown around by several hundred newly forming stars embedded within the dark cloud,” ESA officials wrote in the statement.
“Even then, Hubble just scratches the surface; most of the star-birthing firestorm is hidden behind clouds of fine dust — essentially soot — that are thicker toward the bottom of the image,” they added. “The black areas of the image are not empty space, but are filled with obscuring dust.”
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Hubble launched into orbit around Earth on April 25, 1990, aboard the space shuttle Discovery. Since then, the iconic scope has collected roughly 1.6 million observations of nearly 52,000 celestial targets, according to the statement.
The new image of NGC 1333 showcases ferocious stellar winds sweeping through the nebula’s clouds of dust. These stellar winds are likely caused by the bright blue star at the top of the image, highlighting the messy and chaotic nature of star formation in the universe.
Another bright super-hot star can be seen near the bottom of the image, shining through the nebula’s dust like Earth’s sun masked by cloudy skies. The reddish glow represents hydrogen ionized by young stars, which propel bursts, or jets, of material into space as they grow and accrete infalling dust and gas from the surrounding area. The fine dust of the nebula filters the starlight, allowing more of the red light to shine through, but scattering the light at blue wavelengths, according to the statement.
“This view offers an example of the time when our own sun and planets formed inside such a dusty molecular cloud, 4.6 billion years ago,” ESA officials wrote in the statement. “Our sun didn’t form in isolation but was instead embedded inside a mosh pit of frantic stellar birth, perhaps even more energetic and massive than NGC 1333.”
The City of Dublin recently held its annual “Nature in Our Backyard” Photography Contest. Photographs could include any wildlife or nature setting, but had to be taken in Dublin in the past 12 months. A survey of the top 10 photographs, selected by a judging panel, is now available for public voting.
Mike’s Camera will provide gift certificates, as well as metal prints of their photographs, to the top four vote-getters. They will also be recognized at a Dublin City Council meeting. Framed photographs will be displayed in the lobby at Dublin Civic Center and on the City’s website. Voting ends at 11:59 p.m., on Sunday, April 30.
Despite this week’s gloomy weather, spring is here in all its glory. And several area art shows reflect the green season.
Art in Bloom celebrates its 25th anniversary at the Fitchburg Art Museum this weekend. Opening today and running through Sunday, April 30, it features floral arrangements crafted by local florists and garden club members inspired by works of art in the museum.
Several special programs and events are planned throughout the weekend. Highlights include 1 p.m. performance by Fitchburg State University Chamber Choir and the 6-8 p.m. Art in Bloom Champagne Reception, both on Friday, April 28. Other events include an Ikebana floral arrangement demo, 1-3 p.m., Saturday, April 29, and an artist talk with May Babcock, 1-2 p.m., Sunday, April 30. Call 978-424-4506 or email [email protected] for reservation assistance or questions.
Starting next Wednesday, May 3-Tuesday, May 30, Lowell-based photographer and artist Sally Chapman will exhibit 25 framed pieces from her “Mythic Nature” series, along with her sculpted art books in the gallery at the Concord Public Library, 129 Main St., Concord.
Chapman makes photo-based art that gravitates toward tactile methods of printing and shaping her photographic work.
Her “Mythic Nature” series features imaginary worlds created by removing statuary from their pedestals and placing them in landscapes created from formal gardens, farmlands, and watery hideaways. She then prints the imagery with cyanotype, a 19thcentury process, and adds her hand by drawing and hand-coloring them with pastels.
Her artist books are sculptural and transform as the piece is unfolded or opened. Some are inspired by her imagery, and the shape evolves from that idea. Others start with a given shape — a wooden block or a cigar box — and the imagery is sculpted, cut, and folded around that shape.
Chapman has a BFA in ceramics and photography from Michigan State University. She worked and exhibited as a ceramic artist for over 20 years but returned to photography in 2010.
Her solo shows include the Soho Photo Gallery, New York City; The Halide Project, Philadelphia; Three Stones Gallery, Concord; and the Arts League of Lowell.
A reception is 2-4 p.m., Saturday, May 6, and a hands-on experience with the artist books is 2-4 p.m. on Saturday, May 20. For more info on Chapman and her art, visit http://www.sallychapmanphoto.com/.
Also opening next Wednesday, May 3 is “May Showcase: 43.7623°N, 69.3203°W” at Loading Dock Gallery at Western Avenue Studios, 133 Western Ave., Lowell. The colorful show runs through Sunday, May 28. Look for more details in “Eye on Art” next Thursday, May 3.
GALLERY NOTES
FUNDRAISER FUN: ‘Tis the season for fundraisers. Lowell’s Brush Art Gallery and Studios holds its annual spring fundraiser tomorrow, Friday, April 28 at Lenzi’s in Dracut. It starts at 6 p.m. and includes cocktails, a buffet dinner, raffle, and cabaret-style performance headlined by Michael Lally, with Matt Descoteaux at the piano, Erin Noonan-Descoteaux, Greg Descoteaux, Jerry Bisantz, Camille Bedard, and special guest Lura Smith. For tickets, visit www.thebrush.org…Concord Museum holds its annual gala 6:30 p.m. on Saturday, May 13 at the American Heritage Museum, 568 Main St., Hudson, Mass. Proceeds benefit the Paul Revere’s Ride Fund, which provides free visits to students in underserved communities in the area. Visit concordmuseum.org/events/2023-concord-museum-annual-gala/ for tickets and info.
Hilma af Klint, The Ten Largest, Group IV, No. 9, Old Age, 1907.
Hilma af Klint Foundation
AT THE Tate Modern gallery in London, two pioneering artists who never met are finally brought into conversation.
Hilma af Klint and Piet Mondrian trained as landscape painters in the late 19th century – af Klint in Sweden, Mondrian in the Netherlands. They also died in the same year, 1944, by which time each had developed a unique abstract style.
Both worked in an era coming to terms with huge advances in microscopy, radiography and photography. The world available to the human senses had been revealed as a mere sliver of that accessible to science.
Each artist’s output included what we would now call scientific “visualisation”. Af Klint conveyed insights about how things grow in paintings inspired by botanical illustration, as in No. 9, Old Age from The Ten Largest series (main image).
Arum Lily; Blue flower 1908-1909. Kunstmuseum Den Haag
Bequest Salomon B. Slijper.j
Mondrian’s interest in the mechanics of visual perception saw him break images down to their perceptual units, so that his Arum Lily; Blue flower (pictured above) is an assembly of lines, lozenge shapes and diagonals.
Hilma af Klint, Tree of Knowledge, The W Series, No. 1, 1913.
Hilma af Klint Foundation
Af Klint’s “world tree” paintings grew almost diagrammatic in their effort to express the cosmic connections between all life, as in Tree of Knowledge (pictured above). Her attempts to map her own perceptual associations are more startling still.
Hilma af Klint, The Swan, The SUW Series, Group IX, No. 19, 1914-1915.
Hilma af Klint Foundation
The two works above and below are the culmination of a series that began with an image of two swans. Shown here are The Swan, No. 19 (pictured above) and No. 17 (pictured below), from The SUW Series, Group IX.
The Swan, The SUW Series, Group IX, No. 17, 1914-1915
Hilma af Klint Foundation
Hilma af Klint and Piet Mondrian: Forms of life is at the Tate Modern until 3 September.
Welcome to Ways of Seeing, an interview series that highlights outstanding talent in photography and film—the people behind the camera whose work you should be watching. In this week’s edition, senior content editor Michael Beckert chats with the Colombian, Madrid-based photographer Felipe Romero Beltrán on his latest project.
When I saw pictures from your new book, Dialect (published by Loose Joints), months ago, I was immediately drawn to their bewitching nature. But I kept asking myself, “What is going on in these images?” So what, in your opinion, is this project about?
Dialect started in 2020 with this group of young migrants who crossed the Mediterranean Sea from Morocco, to arrive here in Spain. Because of very specific political bureaucracies in Spain, these migrants have to spend a long time—usually three years—waiting for papers, which will allow them to live and work here. I met these guys during a talk I was giving on my experience as a migrant, because I’m originally from Colombia. At first it was just that—trying to make a connection with these guys and speak to them, and a real relationship formed.
From there, I proposed the project and explained that I wanted to take photographs of them in this limbo state, documenting the years of waiting. The guys started taking Spanish-speaking classes, workshops to develop skills to integrate into society, and this project we shot was also a way for them to integrate. For me, it’s been quite a learning experience—not just in terms of my technical approach to photography, but also in regards to my ability to conceptualize an entire project.
Courtesy of Felipe Romero Beltrán
One of the reasons this project stood out to me is because it’s technically documentary photography, but it feels like fashion imagery.
Absolutely. When I first met these guys, I was just taking photos of them for their WhatsApp and Instagram accounts while getting to know them. Because they were minors, I had to wait for formal permission to photograph them for the project. During that time, I heard a ton of stories about their experiences coming from Tangier, Morocco, and then to Seville. When I proposed the project, I asked them to reenact, in the photographs, some of the experiences they had on their journey from Morocco to Spain. In the case of Youssef (pictured below), he was talking a lot about how he traveled to Seville on a boat with 80 other people. I asked the guys to approach this reality through a straight photographic image, but with a twist on the reenactment, since I was not able to be there at the time. This kind of reenactment leads to conversation about their experiences and to accept them in a way—and the photograph is a way to remember them.
Courtesy of Felipe Romero Beltrán
It’s almost like the process of making the photographs is a form of therapy, then? How did you come up with this approach to documentary photography? I’ve never heard of anything like it.
I’ve always been connected to education and to academics. In school, I started to think critically about what documentary means, exactly—how we categorize what is documentary and what is not. I wanted to play with that.
Is this project also partly a study of masculinity?
Yeah, absolutely. It was part of the project because these men were living together 24/7 while waiting for their papers and they had a specific situation as migrants. They were trying to make a living in Spain with the same background, the same experience. And of course, everyone has a different role and each person has to make a position on what they wanted to become afterwards. It was kind of unconscious for me, because I felt like part of this group. We made this bond and this relation that you can feel in the pictures.
How do you light your work?
Normally, I mostly use flash, especially for the interiors. And I use digital mostly, but it’s an old camera, so I can’t change much of the parameters.
I can’t believe these images are digital—they don’t feel that way at all.
That’s the thing: At the beginning, I said, “Let’s do it in digital,” because of money. But at the same time, it was easier to show the guys the pictures right after I shot them, to see if they liked it. If they didn’t, we’d repeat the picture and make edits to how we photographed them. So we shared our thoughts on the session when I was working with them.
Can you tell me a bit more about your own story and how you got into photography?
As I told you, I’m from Colombia. Socially and politically, Colombia is a complicated place. At the beginning, I was meant to study more on the journalistic or anthropologic side of things, but I discovered photography when my sister coincidentally brought a camera to our place. In an instant, I was like, “What the hell is this thing?” We build our relation with the world through words, through sentences, through this verbal experience. And with photography, it’s completely different. That’s what really struck me about it. At 17, I got a scholarship in Argentina and moved there by myself, because I needed to find a job. I studied there for five years, then I moved between Israel and Palestine for another scholarship that I got from the university. I applied for another scholarship here in Madrid for a master’s degree, and now I’m finishing my Ph.D. in photography.
Quite a long, long path—but fortunately, I could attach all my education to my practice.
Courtesy of Felipe Romero Beltrán
Is there a photographer whose work you find particularly inspiring?
I’ve always pulled references, not just from other photography, but also paintings and movies; one of the references for this project was Pier Paolo Pasolini, the Italian filmmaker. I found it interesting how he approached not only the visuals, but also the narrative itself. So that’s one instance. But photographically speaking, I’m keen on a lot more.
On one hand, I’m really interesting in photographic surface—like Wolfgang Tillmans, for example, who’s really sophisticated, educated, and respectful with the photographic medium. But at the same time, I’m fascinated by the conceptual approach: One of the references from the development phase of the Dialect project was [painter] Diego Velázquez, because he was from Seville. He has this relation with the Baroque that you can still feel in the city: in the architecture, in images, and in the religion.
What are you most proud of when it comes to your career and journey as an artist?
That’s a complicated question. But the thing that makes me happiest is that every project is a learning path, and it’s always connected with my next thing. For example, we are now working on a different project with two of the guys from Dialect that has to do with dance and movement. This is an example of that organic path.
At the same time, the thing I’m most proud of is that each project allows me to learn and be more precise, not only when it comes to the concept, but also in the photography. I’m trying to improve every single day that I’m doing pictures.
