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Born
in Santiago de Chile.
Has
lived and worked in Paris, Madrid
and San Francisco, California.
Studied
and worked as a professional
and Fine Art photographer in the San Francisco Bay Area from 1990 to
2002.
Currently
lives and works in Trieste,
Italy.
I have been a fine art photographer for almost 19 years now.
From the very first time I started taking photographs I tried to convey
my way of seeing the world. I have done this especially through three
different photographic mediums: infrared film, Polaroid film and
digital photography.
I fell in love with infrared film because of the way it could change
reality and give the world such a romantic and dream like feeling that
was so completely surreal. Infrared film is a marvelous tool to show
what our naked eyes can't see. It conveys the sacred and the dreamlike
in the most mundane and nondescript places —a road, an old building, a
park, an abandoned house— which suddenly acquire a lush, dreamy glow.
I am interested in communicating what I see with my mind's eye,
not what most people would call objective reality. I look for things
that express the feeling I have that the world is in a constant state
of flux. I like to reveal light where there is none. I want to show
atmosphere more than facts. I use infrared film because of it's
capacity to re-create reality, to open a hidden door into the mystery
of nature and the magic of the treasures that are hidden in the
commonplace.
Then I fell in love with Polaroid film because it allowed me to
recreate a sense of texture, close to that of paint. Photography is
usually considered as merely a way of recording reality. But I like to
turn that concept around and challenge the viewer to redefine
photography as an art in just the same way they would a painter.
Polaroid film allowed me to work with photography in just this way, as
a painter does with her brushes and pigments. And like all art,
photography is subjective and represents the artist's world.
With respect to the work that I call Walls, it all started one day, as
I was taking a leisurely walk through Trieste. At the time, I didn't
know Trieste very well because I had just moved there. Sometimes a
change of scenery for an artist is quite inspiring. From the very
beginning of my career as a fine art photographer posters and ads stuck
to the walls of our cities have produced a kind of fascination for me;
but never so much as to create a whole body of work on them. I would
take one picture here and there, and then forget about it in the
darkness of a drawer. But this time in Trieste, I came upon a wall that
took my breath away. It was a huge wall, literally covered with posters
of all kinds and all ages. Layers and layers of old and new ads had
created a "natural" work of abstract art.
I stopped my walk and started taking pictures. I worked the shapeless
mass of paper on the wall to create a composition that would integrate
color, texture, design and strong content to form what a good picture
needs in order to have impact for the viewer. I wanted to create an
image that would produce, in the eventual observer, the sensation of
looking at a painting; a well organized painting that would produce
pleasure, strong emotion, and curiosity. I wanted to make the viewer
forget the fact that the subject was a simple street wall.
Not only did I want to create a painting, but I also wanted to convey
the message that the wall was shouting. A message told by the people of
the city, the weather, the passing of the seasons, the rain, the sun,
the whole natural and synthetic world that the city had created as one
beautiful work of collective art.
Since then I have been taking pictures of walls in every single city I
have had the chance to visit.
María Paz Graiño
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