Gran parte de mi fotografía proviene de los primeros años de tensión emocional que implican relaciones difíciles. En muchos sentidos, el mundo privado que se revela en mi trabajo es mi propio mecanismo de escape. El proceso de mi vida organiza todas estas abstracciones caóticas de la existencia, moldeándolas en formas a menudo surrealistas y teatrales. Los resultados pueden ser explosivos, amenazantes y también dulces y sentimentales. Es un universo de fragmentación y desorden irracional que está más allá de mi zona de seguridad. Sin embargo, es mi mundo. Una en la que siempre puedo retirarme porque puedo manejarla. Soy la estrella de mi propio show.
Cuando tenía cuatro años, mis padres tuvieron un divorcio tortuoso. Mi padre había usado todo tipo de drogas y era un alcohólico agudo. La relación había sido abusiva, a menudo hasta el punto de una violencia grave, y finalmente mi madre no tuvo más remedio que huir conmigo y regresar a España.
Finalmente mi padre se puso serio, y hemos permanecido en contacto a través de los años. Cuando era niño me enviaron a visitarlo durante los descansos de verano de la escuela. Todos los días insistía en que saliéramos para que él pudiera tomarme fotografías. Años más tarde me di cuenta de que las imágenes que estaba haciendo eran ilustraciones de una relación imaginaria. Uno que él había creado en su mente. Este engaño se había convertido en su universo secreto, escondido del resto del mundo. En la mayoría de las fotos de nosotros que él había diseminado por su casa, yo no estaba sonriendo: una prueba de que incluso a una edad temprana no confiaba en que esta ‘relación’ que estaba tratando de representar fuera de alguna manera real. Las imágenes eran ficción.
Por mucho que sea difícil admitirlo a mí mismo, sé que soy como mi padre. Existe una sensación de aislamiento cada vez mayor y delirios peculiares, por lo que la fotografía se ha convertido en mi terapia y mi mejor amigo. Estoy intrigado por las curiosidades oscuras de la vida. Transfixed, son lo que tengo; lo que me tiene.
ENG: Victor Cobo’s photographs are at once brutal, terrifying, and humorous. They are a schizophrenic narrative of his daily encounters: dark snapshots, funny one-liners, and occasional soft pauses that have a raw energy unlike many other photographers today. In one photo, a grainy, brooding, unidentifiable female figure stands on the side of a road, her fists almost clenched and eyes glowing from an unseen light source. Another image depicts Victor wearing a Mexican wrestler’s mask, waving his arms jovially from the body of a shark. Cobo’s ongoing body of work, which includes hundreds of these seemingly unrelated photos shot over the past decade or so, show no beginning and no end. They are pieces of a non-linear diary that take us through eerie woods, sex clubs and even lush inviting seascapes all in one blow.
While his work is not untrue to his life experience, he describes this discordance as an alternate reality, one that enacts every day occurrences on an open-ended stage. “I feel that making a photographic universe that’s theatrical can open up so many interesting doors to the imagination and to images that can be preconceived and created. It’s like a battle between the conscious and the conscious when I create. They can be beautiful, or intrinsically dark, or both, and it’s exciting to me.”
Many of the dark layers in Cobo’s work are closely tied to a difficult family history. When Cobo was four, his parents divorced as a result of his father’s physical abuse and multiple drug addictions. Cobo continued to visit him during summer breaks during which his father frequently photographed him, unsmiling and uncomfortable in front of the camera. Years later, after further estrangement, Victor discovered that his father had organized these photos into what Cobo describes as a “secret shrine” of their “imaginary relationship.” Victor acknowledges that his work might be a means of reconciling this dark past, his curiosity with everyday life experience, and the ultimate reality of death looming ahead.
“I am intrigued and exhilarated by dark fantasies, life’s morbid curiosities and the mystery of reality decaying into the surreal. Transfixed. My father’s gifts are an ambiguous burden of vast weight. They are what I have; what has me.”
While this past has clearly impacted his work, Cobo also notes artistic influences ranging from photographers Brassaii and Man Ray, to painter Otto Dix, filmmakers David Lynch, and Jim Jarmusch, and even Tom Waits. He describes being driven to create at all costs, and admittedly makes much of his living by working late nights at homeless shelters. “Often when I making a photograph, it’s as if it could be the last one. It’s something inside of you that needs to come out as frequently as possible. And of course you want to have someone who believes in you encouraging you and selling your work, but really deep down a real artist makes the work for himself or herself. If you couldn’t create, what would be the point of existing?”
