Una lentitud necesaria para ver lo que solemos ignorar y apreciar cosas que damos por hechas. La carretera no siempre es un lugar de paso, a veces es el destino. ¿De cuántos colores puede ser el cielo? ¿Qué pasaría si corriéramos una noche desnudos por el asfalto? La fotógrafa de Tejas ha recorrido un largo trayecto hasta llegar a Brooklyn, donde vive ahora. Quizás por eso sus fotografías son aventuras por la carretera de ida y no vuelta en las que lo importante es el camino y la meta está por descubrir. Sus retratos, normalmente en blanco y negro, enseñan solo lo justo (y necesario) del ser humano: medio rostro, las arrugas que se forman en una sonrisa… y ocultan la superficie, la parte más impersonal. Éxodos sin rumbo, caras a medio descubrir.
Llenos de esperanza y sin ninguna expectativa emprendimos un viaje sin rumbo, con el único objetivo de encontrarnos mientras nos perdíamos. Recorrimos carreteras, no sé cuantas, en el silencio de la noche. De día dormíamos, esperando a que se apagaran todas las luces para volver a salir. Azul océano, gris, púrpura, naranja, beige trigo … juntos descubrimos todos los colores de los que puede ser un cielo por la noche y así, durmiendo de día y soñando de noche, llegamos a ninguna parte, pero llegamos.
ENG: This short and ongoing series was meant to hi-light the struggles of acceptance and many individual’s desires to become anonymous and detach themselves from society. It is not meant to be happy, but powerful enough to evoke a reaction in someone to change their thoughts.
“When I was younger I would spend the summer writing in this little journal of mine and I would even fill up the pages to the brink in which it would fall apart. And no matter how different the plot or the characters or the settings were, there was always this similar theme of mystery, despair, and death. This sounds horrible, I am aware, but these writings and eventually my photographs were influenced greatly on the films The Nightmare Before Christmas, Edward Scissorhands and Beetle Juice by Tim Burton. Like these films and many of Burton’s other work, I want to create a deep, sometimes comical or magical, story behind my images.
These films, and my own personal feelings, led me to create these images of detachment and anonymity. I spent hours sketching out the photo ideas, gathering every detailed prop and outfit, and heading out to the field to shoot. Each image was carefully planned, and I set out with the determination to capture the image no matter what events may happen in between. Next came hours spent in photoshop, compiling the images into a finished project, a task that was tedious and consuming. Many of the images were a combination of over 10 separately taken images, dozens of layers and filters, and textures galore, all to create that specific atmosphere and surrealistic feel behind each one.
One of my greatest desires as an artist, like any artist really, is to extract an emotion, reaction or even a question out of the viewer the desire to detach one’s self.