Today I am very pleased to present photographic work of Alberto Álvarez Gómez. This short piece, an introduction to his work, will initiate a series of this week’s posts: first an interview, then an opportunity to showcase one project and finally a selection of one photo picked from the images published during the whole week, which will be later printed on a t-shirt.
Alberto Álvarez Gómez is a Spanish photographer who tries to ”understand, explore and enjoy nature” through his work. He studied photography in Edinburgh, Scotland and Scottish landscape became his first major inspiration. Now living in Galicia, Spain he continuous to portrait nature, looking for its beauty in fleeting moments but also searching for a tension in our connection with the natural world.
This tension between men and nature is beautifully expressed through this image from his ”A cova” (The Cave) series. The symbol of a window has a long tradition in art from the renaissance painting up to today and has always stood for connection and separation, longing and dream. Here he executes this idea brilliantly, creating a theater like experience, two dark heavy curtains on the sides linked with a loosely hanging rope. It creates a visual barrier, stop, a ”do not cross” message which emphasize the separation between inside and outside while at the same time emanating with a deflated resignation. Barely visible through the glass is small piece of a mountain, just close enough to be climbed but distanced enough to be a challenge. The view is obscured by the condensation on the window surface and this obviously adds another layer of separation, which is a brilliant way of showing the difference between the warmth of human interior and the indifferent landscape outside.
Alberto is trying to depict the ephemeral beauty of the natural world giving us his very personal impressions, showing us the inner magic of both the artist and the subject. The key words here are poetry, fragility and sensitivity.
He moves freely between colour and black and white photography. The latter has a different feeling steering more towards grainy moody school of Japanese bure bokeh, rendering the image more hostile and even more alien.
Personally I find his images most interesting when he introduces the human activities into the natural landscape. Through these works one can see a yearning for a simpler time, a certain melancholic luddism underlined by his use of analog photography and its recognizable aesthetic.
The mix of the tension and nature beauty in Alberto’s work is something I am looking forward to coming back to. I hope you are too.
If you enjoyed reading this post stay with us for more of Alberto Alvarez’s photography. Also you might want to check his website to find out more about his work.
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