A Dialogue between Reality and Abstraction

During my first figurative photographic work I began to settle the fundamentals of the different elements a photograph is made from, such as light, darkness or even the "evanescence of the moment", as Roland Barthes called the moment itself when a picture is taken.

Thinking about these facts, first of all we can consider that everything we are shooting is real, just because we can see it afterwards fixed on photographic paper. Evidently this is true, but anyhow, some important considerations can be made about it.

The viewpoint of an object or a landscape, can be completely distorted by a different lightning. The object obviously remains the same, but it just looks different. We can understand this fact easily if we reme mber the special illumination produced by fog, for example. Or simply if we take the moonlight into consideration.

The reason for it is easy to understand. An object gets its meaning not only from its beeing itself, but from everything that usually surrounds it too. The interaction of these two facts is what is completing its final signification. Consequently, if we consciously substract one of these elements, in fact we are embracing the way of abstraction.
If an object looses its daily signification, the only remaining thing is the feeling produced by itself, because it has no surrounding elements to disturb its attention. This is the final reason that move Isabel Salinas and me to join poetry and photography in the book "Isladak".

Going further on this concept of abstraction, the next step was not so easy to fulfil. Once taken away one of the two main components of the daily significance of an object, what could happen taken away both of them? Theorically it is impossible to take a photograph of the emptynes, so the problem was solved considering the mere effect of the light on the empty film. The work "Apocalypse of St. John" was the final result.

This way I finished my experimental work with photography and began to take into consideration the uprising new digital techniques.
In the last years of the decade of the 80's the interaction between photography and computer techniques became more and more evident, specially due to the increasing popularity of computers.. The possibilities of scanning and altering photographs was increasing more and more, and digitally retouched photographs became usual in the next decade of the 90's.
But the close and daily work with the computer showed me that it was really possible to find another way, different from photography, in order to create new forms for expressing artistic ideas.
This way, making use of a brand new tool, emerged infography for me as a new artistic technique.
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