Paul

Visual stimuli saturation in our society affects our sense of identity. Technology and social media have created a system that paradoxically didn’t help to individualize the singular characteristics of each person, but their homogenization instead. These photographs explore, from the traditional portrait background, the identity subversion and the rise of a sinister nature beneath the visually polished appearance of reality. Neutral and impersonal settings, sometimes not defined and abstract, inside which individuality loses itself and camouflages with these settings. Places that have in common being the typical places of a consumer society: gymnasium, supermarket or even our home itself. That’s why these enclosed spaces lack horizons, they are plain and closed, independently of being exterior or interior; they are empty, neutral and homogeneous, spaces without identity. Characters don’t stare the camera, making it less violent for the viewer to watch and observe. These scenes have fake naturalness, theatrical distort, because everything that appears in the image is there to be seen. Characters appear suspended in time, making their immobile and mechanic characteristics more obvious, oblivious to what is happening around them. Spaces where light shines 24 hours a day, representing the 24/7 modern society standard, always ready, always productive. Color is a fundamental element on this work, like the setting, it helps with the homogenization and neutrality idea, in other words: alienation. On top of that they also have a large symbolic meaning. The contrast between pink color (Femininity, infancy and youth symbol) and black (The psychological antonym, represented in delirious and disturbing eyes of the photographed), seems to corrupt the naif atmosphere allowing an uncomfortable and disturbing feeling to be born in the viewer. There are two parallel narratives, one created from what we can actually see in the image and another one much more symbolic and subjective with everything that it is not said explicitly but can be deduced by the use of space, color and body language of the characters. This second narrative is the true heart of the project. Both narratives, fragmented, symbolic and fictional open a window to a world of alienated characters but that represent, without a doubt a part of ourselves, down to the individual and social level. These photographs are symbolic mirrors of a social and cultural moment in the present and maybe a future premonition.