Technology, Simple Beauty and the Return to Basics

In the past years I've been experimenting with lots of medias, materials, techniques for one simple reason. Trying to externalize my state of mind. A way of depicting my moods through a creative process. Recently I've put together (again!) a personal portfolio of my work as a way to understand what I've been through mentally and creatively. I know exactly what I've been through in the past 20 years but having it in front of me, on paper, was extremely useful and extremely weird! For the first time ever I could see my mind on a desk.

Photography and writings have always been my passion. With a camera (Sony Alpha 350) I used to capture moments in a specific location and timeframe and with words I described the same moment. Not necessarily at the same time. Or at the same place. Black and white, nature, urban details were my favorite to shoot. But at one point there was a shift. I could see it clearly glancing through the pages of my portfolio. Abstraction came into my realm. "Beautiful pics" I thought by staring at them. Very intense, dark but expressive, colorful yet mentally monochromatic. And I say this because I know exactly how my life was when I shot those photos. This before falling into the iphone mode and its time wasting photography apps.

I rarely retouch(ed) my photos though. The beauty of capturing a moment is really what it is. A moment in time. Why would you manipulate it? It would not be the moment your eyes saw and tried to memorize through a lense and then share it to others.

Everytime I check my instagram feed all I see is mostly an unrealistic depiction of reality. A distortion of the everyday that, in the beginning, made me smile but then the smile became a sort of a disgusting realization that what we see in the virtual world is a "parallel non sense". Photo editing is becoming the new normal. "Virtual Insanity" is what Jamiroquai called it in his song in the 90's (in the 90's for god sake...!!!!). Baudrillard in his "Simulacra and Simulation" ((1981) depicted a postmodern society where reality became artificial, reliant on images and symbols in such a way that we basically completely detached ourself from the actual reality (life as it happens). And that is exactly what is happening.

Walking in the streets today all you see are people staring at their phones. Taking selfies in front of spectacular monuments with faces that become a parody of a freak show. No! Not even a parody! We are living in a freak show! And the spectacular monument becomes a wallpaper that those people didn't probably even see. Or cared to see. You see drone pictures of cities from above or from within that, nothing to say about their amazing beauty but...is that reality? Colors, lights, empty streets are taken to an extent that the urban realm is a mere cinematic/photographic reality shared for amazement and possibly for many "likes".

When you see images of places you know you realized that those pictures have simply taken away their soul! The soul of a place, or a city, is what makes it alive, why kill it? What happened to the "sense of place"? Topophilia is my new thing! A strong sense of place!

The sense of place has to be lived and felt not faked through apps.

It has been so long I haven't used my camera! So the other day I took it out from its bag. There was dust on it. Charged the battery. Checked if the memory card still had space on it and...fuck it....I need to go back to basics. Point and shoot. No lies. No fakes.

My brain and soul need a big change! My creative soul is tired of bullshit and something needs to move! ((read my previous post)

I read a lot, I'm a constant learner, I'm an observer. I love simple things. I love real things.

So I decided to start a new adventure. And the adventure is not new at all. I am going back to where it all started. With a camera, a Moleskine and a pen. And I did an additional step. I went in town and I also got myself an instant camera!

You remember Polaroids?? Point and shoot and whatever comes out comes out? The power of surprise! The power of no filters! The power of basic beauty. The power of fuckin up a shot and being happy with the result! Without the need to waste time on photoshop or on whatever othewr app to fix it and show a fake frame to the world! I want to be able (again!) to enjoy life as it happens. Stop, shoot, print and then get some flower and smell them and say "This is real!"

It is a start. Maybe not the last one. I want to go back and enjoy my reality in a simple way. With my eyes. With my interpretation of that circus we call society. And of that beautiful "wallpaper" I still love to call landscape.