Why all the time
A few days ago I went to the opening
of the Albarrán Cabrera photography exhibition at the Galeria Valid Foto in Barcelona. Albarrán
Cabrera are the duo Angel Albarrán and Anna Cabrera, and as it happens I’d
previously viewed work of theirs at this same venue. Both the photography and
the gallery continue to inspire me for a variety of reasons, but for the moment
let me simply say that both the photos and the rooms they’re in are well tended
and well arranged. Then it is important to mention the gallery space as con-text
and shared creative process because part of the exhibit’s underlying concept
involves ways and styles in which images are rendered—where and how they are
presented as much as what they are before presentation.
Both the so called raw images here and their rendering make you want to
take pictures in more than one sense. This is often a question of something
unnameable or not fully describable in the picture frame. I think that becomes
clear in the exhibition notes, along with a calling out of time. “Why all the
time” [Por qué todo el tiempo] is the title of the whole series of pictures, a
question without a question mark, understandable perhaps as a further
fragmenting of what can never be full presentation. I think we need to be
reminded again that “The freshest, purest, and newest is found in the simplest
things, those closest to us.” This, from the gallery notes, perhaps provides
the “raw” element in the pictures, basic no doubt for the part titled “This is
you.” Obviously it is you-me-us who in some way have to answer the photographers
and the gallerista, to respond, I
mean, to the photographs in meaningful conversation.
Such a dialogue perhaps becomes more
pressing in the second part of the show, called “The mouth of Krishna”
[La Boca de
Krishna]. This invocation takes us, as the photographs take us, into a
contemplation of differences in meaning, differences in perspectives as they
are sought within (and finally, beyond) any ongoing dialogue that eventually
comes about. There is, for example, a particular landscape displayed as
vertical instead of horizontal. Krishna’s
mouth and the things that are blend into scientific myth, along with the
flowers, the faces, the bodies that inspire dialogue. The technical aspects of
rendering then seem to me to take on new importance, because such aspects are
constantly part of the pictures yet not always the first thing to be
considered. Valid Foto, importantly, is informative on such aspects. “Why all
the time” will be at the gallery until 25 June 2016. Linked by: http://es.validfoto.com/