Why all the time

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/