THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF CARLES RODRIGO///
A selection of photographs curated by Ben Jeans Houghton with accompanying Interview and Essay.
Translated by Adriana Rojas Viquez.

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Seeing your photographs, my mind is running laps to generate a film around them, to imagine the smells and sounds that inhabit each moment. How do you feel about photography in relation to cinema?

Me encanta el cine, es una de mis grandes aficiones. En la mayoría de los casos los dos buscan contar historias, pero en la fotografía debes de condensar toda la información en un solo momento y posiblemente esto haga que la fotografía esté mas abierta a la imaginación del espectador, es una de las cosas que me gusta de la fotografía, la relación con el espectador y el sentido totalmente diferente que puede adquirir para este o para dos espectadores diferentes, nunca suelo explicar el porqué de una fotografía.

I love Cinema, It is one of my biggest passions. Most of the time both look to tell a story, but in photography you have to condense all the information into one moment and possibly that makes the picture more open to the spectator’s imagination. That is one of the things I like about photography, the relationship with it's audience and the very different forms it can acquire. I never tend to explain the “why” of a picture.

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Your recognition of sources of artificial light seems wonderfully primary, as our general experience is of the light they shed. Do you ever filter or project light in your images and how do you feel about intervention/ post production/ manipulation, outside of composing and pressing your shutter release?

La luz es un elemento indispensable en la fotografía, para mi es una fuente con la que crear diferentes atmósferas, me gusta mucho jugar con la luz, digo jugar porque nunca he tenido una enseñanza de como tratarla, desde el principio he ido manipulando y controlando esta para conseguir mis objetivos en cada toma, siempre la luz tiene un porque en mis fotografías, nunca se deja a parte. Antes de cada fotografía me planteo
el tipo de luz, que hacer con la luz que tengo y que sensación quiero dar, entonces mediante materiales intento conseguir lo que he imaginado, nunca es post producción ni manipulación digital, en digital sólo escaneo los negativos y arreglo los colores, contrastes...etc.

Light is an indispensable element in photography. To me it is a source with which I can create different moods; I really like to play with light. I say play because I have never been taught how to deal with it. From the start I have been manipulating and controlling it to gain my objective in each shot. Light always has a “why” in my pictures, it is never a separate element. Before every picture I question the type of light, what to do with the light I have available and the feeling I want to share, so through materials I try to achieve what I had envisioned. Digitally I only scan the negatives and fix the colours, contrasts… etc.

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{ Essay: BLIND MIRROR

When first seeing Carles Rodrigo's into the wild series, I was immediately reminded of Ryan McGinley's series Moonmilk. This got me thinking about authorship, as the photographer owns the action, of committing light to film, not the subject. Secondly how infamy or fame, in terms of image, mirrors a race to the North pole. To claim a subject, the idea and it's execution and how that action (generated by the context of photography not the Photographer) can be seen to impede any other image perceived as secondary, due to chronology. Latterly how powerfully damaging that trope can be and how wrong that is.

Simply stating a resemblance of one thing to another makes an experience cloudy; our urge often being to deal with sense data as fast and conclusively as possible. Tiger > Run. Perceive > Relate > Accept > Dismiss. Recognising one thing in terms of another visually similar thing can often get in no way closer to what that image is, or why it exists. A Butterfly is not a Moth. The recognition of such similarities can generate a slippery and unhelpful distance.

As an Artist I have on many occasions been told, Oh so and so already did that, but I have learned to turn it around and feel it as a positive. No two images are the same, nor are any two people. The struggle for total originality is not part of my impetus or interest. If anything I feel the coincidental commonalities that appear, mostly through commentary, are an accolade. The fact that someone somewhere has had a shared interest or vision and took their own idiosyncratic steps to get there, is amazing. These images have made me think about the collapsing of unimaginable gaps between people for moments as brief as a shutter, and how beautiful that is, before the similarity is named, or in retrospect, embraced with open arms.

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What Camera's do you use and why?

Utilizo muchos tipos diferentes de cámaras, según avanza el tiempo voy modificando mis gustos y utilizo la que mas tiene que ver con los resultados que busco. Tengo dos yashicas de 35mm, una telemétrica y otra reflex, una rolleiflex de medio formato negativo 6x6, una contax t3, tres polaroids, una 600 otra sx70 y una 180, una zent-e...y un largo etc.

I use many different types of cameras. As time goes by I modify my preferences and I use the one that is most suitable to the results I want to achieve. I have two 35mm Yashicas’, a Telemetria and a Reflex, one medium-format 6x6 Rolleiflex, one Contax T3, three Polaroids: a 600 a sx70 and a 180, I also have a Zenit and a Large Format.. etc.