Martis, belli et fertilitatem deum

Posted on 29 March, 2015 by María López Linares

I always love to end the month with something special, and this year, my golden brooch is my project “Baroque Still Evens”, a project that takes me back to the great masters of the Baroque painting in whom I find all my inspiration.

March is the month of Martirius, Mars. In March the Spring just arrived and the first sprouts start showing up… The flowers come back from their lethargy and the fields smells different. But March is also the month of wars and fertility.

This month, the basis of my work are the red and golden colors. The red color because it brings war images but also is the color of the birth, the new life. A color that makes me feel special the same way the smell of a narcissus does, the flower of March.

Mars is also the god who protects fields and cattle. That’s why I’m choosing the golden color, a tone that reminds me the wheat, those huge cultivated fields and the smell of bread.

Each photography is unique, and as you can see, it takes a very careful and precise work from the study of the elements to the planning and developing. I don’t want to add any random detail to my work.

This month has been specially difficult to focus on the theme and find what I was looking for, but what took me longer was to find narcissus in Madrid! Finally, I found them in a small garden center in the downtown.

After a whole morning playing with lights and shadows, this “Martis deus belli. Fertilitas” was born. I hope you like it…

Iván Martínez Segovia

Posted on 25 March, 2015 by María López Linares

Ivan started working as a professional photograher 12 years ago. When reading through his résumé, you realize how much experience he has at creating reports and how he’s been able to join his two passions: photography and music.

I met Ivan by chance, thanks to a beautiful volunteer work that Carmen Hache and Rosa Martínez are developing. It’s a charity project that was born in 2013 in order to create conscience and support against the domestic violence. “Butterfly Woman” contributes with the Foundation Ana Bella, where women who suffered domestic violence help others to get over it. “Butterfly Woman is a movement formed by women that fight the adversity and are able to get up after fell down, women that unfold their wings.”

I joined their photo exhibition opening this year, and among all the shots I saw, my eyes were straight to Ivan’s. After I bought it to contribute with the project, I discovered all his work and why he did this photograph.

Ivan had a very serious bycicle accident back in 2014. The injuries were so bad that he had to leave his work for four months. During that time, he reconsidered his whole career and what he wanted to achieve with it. He decided he wanted to develop a more personal side of his photography, so after he fully recovered he did a few more courses to gain confidence and improve the criteria of his work.

His first exhibition after the accident has been Buttefly Woman. Now he regained his illusion and excitement and is planning to do some more shows.

All photos within this article are his and are from his more personal portfolio. His work for Butterfly Woman is already in my living room as an important part of my collection from emergent photographers.

I wish you all the best and hope I can join your next exhibition.

Here are the links to Ivan’s work and the Butterfly Woman project.

Oficial Web: llamaranta.com

Flickr

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Proyectomujermariposa

February: “Neptunus deus Maris” was born.

Posted on 26 February, 2015 by María López Linares

You all know that I love ending the month with something very special. Along this year, the monthly golden brooch will be my project “12 Baroque Still Even captions in 12 months”.

In my previous post about this project I told you how my inspiration came from the sort of painting called “vanity”, where luxurious scens of fruits and flowers get mixed with books, jars, coins, jewelry, paintings or musican and scientific instruments. All of them are objects that will be accompanied by pieces with symbolic meanings.

Each photography is unique and has been developed with a complicated and precise process.

February is the month of the water, the purification of the souls and the month of Neptune (Roman god). It’s also the month of the amethysts.

After many evenings studying about the meanings of those objects, looking them up in art books and the Internet, and of course, after having some inspiring ideas I wrote down in that small notebook MapyDh gave me one year ago, the photograph “Neptunus deus Maris” was born.

I hope you like it…

Ges Rules

Posted on 23 February, 2015 by María López Linares

Her name is Esther, but her alias is Ges Rules. She is my emerging photographer for February. When she was born back in 1970, she opened her eyes very widely, like trying not to miss anything from around her… Or at least, that was what her mother and grandmother told her.

When she was 8 years old, she was given a Polaroid 1000 as a birthday gift. However, it wasn’t until she started her career as a graphic designer when she realized her true dream was being a photographer, observing and capturing life around her.

I met Esther by chance in a while I was attending a course from David Sagasta. Esther let us use her house to take pictures and I inmediately fell in love with her delicateness. I remember I took her a little basket with fresh fruit in order to thank her for letting us use her house. However, the moment I gave it to her I thought that what I should have brought is in fact a little daisy bouquet… More like her personality.

I started following her work since that day onwards. I’ve seen her grow as an artist over the last two years… Grow a lot. Esther specially does street photo and portraits, two of the disciplines with the same core idea: elegance and tenderness.

I bouth her photography “Behind Yourself” through a beautiful project the photographer Carlos Cazurro is developing: “Pictures for Palestine”. This iniciative was launched by a group of photographers who signed over their rights of their images for a given time in order to collect money for Palestines. I encourage you to follow this project.

Ges Rules is nowadays a contributor with the magazine “Entre Camaras”, the Jorge Pozuelo’s school Fotoaula and has a few photos for sale in Getty and Art+Commerce.

Ges, from now on out you are part of my special photo gallery and also, of my life…

“Currently I think without photography nothing would make sense. Photography is what helps me live” (Ges Rules)

Images @Ges Rules

https://500px.com/gesrules

https://www.flickr.com/people/gesrules/

http://www.gesrules.com/

Leila Amat and her Emergent Bamboo

Posted on 27 January, 2015 by María López Linares

With Leila Amat I’m starting a new project. After a post I read in her blog –which I follow very often- I decided I should collect emerging photos and invite the creators to my blog.

Leila Amat is Spanish philologist and a Grammar and Literature teacher. However two years back she decided to dedícate her professional life to creative photography.

In the beginning of her career as an artista she didn’t start shooting with her camera, but studying them. She was 11 when her house in Seville burnt in flames, with all her infancy inside. Fire didn’t burn everything, but what was worth saving was smoked. Walls, things, everything was the color of a charred log. She then started cleaning one by one all pictures that her father kept in a box. That was her first experience with photoraphy, and stayed in her mind forever.

She didn’t do a shot until she was 17, with an analog camera. From then on out, she’s been progressing, evolving, improving her technique and aesthetic. Since the beginning she tries to make a universe of each photograph she makes, a paralell universe where she could interpret a character that she wasn’t in real life. She herself appears in most of the pictures. Leila concieves photography as a language to live, extend or analyse, a tool to dream and make everyone else dream.

She told me she never thought about exclusively dedicate her life to photography, but suddenly she realized that it was the only thing, together with love, that kept her alive.

She then decided to live out of her pictures, both economic and spiritually. She started selling her works in the streets. She spent hours every day showing and trying to sell her work of art. It was actually very hard because that way, the picture falls in value.

Currently she lives out of selling online in My web’art or through the Gallery Lumas (Germany) and Sophie Lanoe (French)

She came to our vintage space to bring me my wonderful acquisition “Emergent bamboo” and her only pressence left a halo of magnetism hard to explain. Leila transmits sensibility through her look and sweetness that make you love her almost from the first meeting.

I consider myself a lucky person for having her work decorating my house.

I’m sure you’ll love her work as much as I do. Go and visit it at:

www.flickr.com/manifestedesyeux and www.facebook.com/leila.amat.ortega

Images: Leila Amat

Helmut Newton, the polemic photographer

Posted on 27 November, 2014 by María López Linares

Here I am again, one month more, working on my project with El Objetivo Magico (The Magic Lens)

Sometimes it’s overwhelming to face how quickly the months pass… Only one month to go to the end of this productive photographic period of my life.

This month the protagonist is Helmut Newton, our master to replicate. And I’ve had again the help of my dearest friend Monica Giannini as a model. Believe me, if it wasn’t for her this challenge wouldn’t have been the same.

Helmut Newton probably is the photographer who made the erotic photograph glamorous. I’ve read he was called the creator of the ”Chic porno”, and I really think these two words define his perfect style. He is the top representative of the “vouyerism” style (applied to professional photography, of course)

The jump to the fame came when he was 50 already. He had started a few collaborations with Vogue Australia that lead him to Paris to work for the French Vogue.

In 1976 he published his polemic book White Women, where he tried to picture the life of the prostitutes who used to live in the street Saint-Denis. All in his images evoque provocation and sexuality, mixed with a cocktail of glamour and a pinch of violence. It’s been very difficult for me to choose the images to copy and replicate, pictures I felt comfortable with. To be honest, I find his work too much provocative and even violent.

Manolo Blahnik said about Newton’s work: “The Newton’s feminine aesthetic was unique. He was a men who knew how to photograph women looking like women”.

This is the summary of my work this month. Once again, I can’t thank enough to Monica for her help and it’s very special for me to appear with her in one of the photos.

Hope you enjoy our work…

Vivian Maier, the magetism of the daily nature

Posted on 30 October, 2014 by María López Linares

Vivian Maier (1926-2009) left an impressive photographic legacy. You might have enjoyed a tiny part of her job in an exhibition last Summer in Valladolid (Spain) or any other city where it was showed in the country. If you did, you are very lucky, because I couldn’t find any other show with her pictures.

I found her thanks to Beatriz Garcia Couriel during an online photography course. Her simple and plain work will take you to the streests of Chicago and New York during the second half of the 20th century. Those pictures really amazed me.

Vivian used to develop her rolls in the bathroom of the house where she was working as a babysitter. She gathered houndreds of them! Most of them have not been developed yet. Her legacy was discover by chance when over 100,000 negatives were found after an auction in Chicago back in 2007. The owner of that material John Maloof hasn’t been able to public everything yet.

She shot at daily life scenes in Chicago and New York: prostitutes, beggars, homelesses, children in the streets… All of them common daily scenes full of magnetism.

One of the series that grabbed my attention was her self-portraits. They are reflections over mirrors or windows. Shots that she made while walking on Sundays. You’ll find on them a serious Vivian; shy, reserved and discreet. At least, those are the feelings this series makes me feel! The manager of the commission of the exhibition in Valladolid, Anne Morin, explained the reason might be the permanent search for herself. Vivian was the foremother of this trend.

In the beginning I thought to focus on those self-portraits to do my copy of her work, under the most common “Vivian style”, made with a camera very similar to the one she used. A camera I found in an old wardrobe that belonged to my father. A complete Rollei with several lenses, filters and even a remote shooter. Finally I decided to get out with my camera and try to get the shots she would have made.

Here’s the link to the movie of Vivian’s life. It’s totally recommended since you’ll know why whe was the way she was.

This is my own work, the one I’ve done with my colleagues from El Objetivo Magico. I hope you like it!

A Century of Street Style

Posted on 2 October, 2014 by María López Linares

The fact that the street photo style phenomenon was born with Scott Schuman is like saying this gentelman invented the hot water. “There is no news under the Sun” and the only exception to this proverb is Steve Jobs who is probably pointing at his iPad and smiling at me from somewhere up there…

It’s also popular the saying that the ideas don’t know further onwer than the one who dares to actually make them real. So according to this, we do have to recognize Scott Schuman’s the achievement of getting benefits from an old idea such as the street style. You’ll probably have read enough about this photo discipline and I have no much to add. There are many blogs with an only section dedicated to the style of the streets, which goes much further than the catwalks.

When this style started being famous online, the argument to justify the excessive enthusiasm was to affirm that the designers looked to these pictures in order to find some divine inspiration to create their collections. However, the style has reached such a renown online that now brands use this sort of pictures that seem to be very natural shots, which works as a gold mine to get their online customer’s attention. We are again admiring an art that imitates life, or life that imitates an art.

The momentum of the street style on blogs has already passed and now it’s turn for magazines that prefer to pay for pictures of around the catwalk rather than the ones of the fashion show. Then in this case protagonists have nothing to do with the original spontaneity of this discipline.

And before I leave you with these wonderful images from the beginning of the 20th century by the photographer and illustrator Edward Linley Sambourne, I’d like to add my point of view about the “egobloggers”, those young girls who love to publish their fashion designs in a blog. I’m convinced they shouldn’t be considered as a part of the street sytle, although they tried once and again to incorporate this word to their post titles.

The especial situation of the real street style is the luck of premeditation, the spontaneous and unexpected shot and definately not in the creation of a “casual activity” wearing a design to show it in a blog. Said that, please, enjoy the following images. Also try to swap the books in their hands with an iPhone or a Blackberry and you’ll realize these trendsetters’ poses have not changed that much along a hundred years.

Photographies | The Library Time Machine

http://labrujacontacondeaguja.com/2012/04/17/un-siglo-de-street-style/

The neutral Gursky

Posted on 4 September, 2014 by María López Linares

Gursky, with his neutral and straightforward way of looking at the world, at the current society, has been our photographer protagonist to reproduce in August for the project with El Objetivo Magico.

His work focused in the architecture of vast panoramics and color, always under a point of view a bit too neutral and cold with regards to the reality we live nowadays.

Huge áreas, ofices, fabrics or other enormous work places where men stay backwards or he just doesn’t exist at all. Men are just simple toys for society.

Andreas Gursky is the most valued photographer nowadays worldwide. Each work of his can reach over 3 or 4 million. Beatriz Pina chose him in order to challenge us to reproduce his art in August. Believe me if I tell you I hated her because of that! Because of the difficulty, of course… It’s been extremely difficult to find some inspiration.

I am very content with having known his work and learnt to look at the photograph from a different point I used to. Try to emulate his neutrality towards society and see his work as a critic to what we’re building for our children has been enough to make me happy and all those hours dedicated to reproduce his art have been worth it.

Gursky’s images are not simple shots worth thousand euros. His original digital techniques and his way of work are what turn his pictures into truly art.

Here’s the result of my work with the only image I’ve been able to reproduce this month.

From here, I’d like to thank Beatriz Pina for helping me to understand other different way of photographing, and my colleagues from El Objetivo Magico for the patiente and dedication this month to face this challenge.

Richard Avedon

Posted on 31 July, 2014 by María López Linares

One more month with my project “The Magic Lens”. Time passes by so quickly!

Our protagonist this month has been my friend Araceli Calabuig who chose Richard Avedon as our master photographer to replicate in July. And Monica Giannini has been one more time my adorable model. Without her this challenge wouldn’t have been possible.

Richard Avedon was the photographer who made us witnesses of 70 years of history. He was a revolutionary fashion specialist who made his models myths of the history. After his work, fashion photography never was the same. The best fashion magazine are inspired in his artwork yet today.

From his life’s work I choose the elegance and essense of his portraits. He knew how to suprise with something that looks so easy like having someone posing with a white background. Hamphrey Bogart, Marlon Brando or Marilyn Monroe were some of his many models.

I’ve read the way he used to get the essense of his protagonists was easy and very effective at the same time: exhaust them, not only psychology but also physically. Sometimes, over four hours of work in front of the camera was enough for the model to show the real personality.

Richard Avedon was a great artist able to surprise not only by capturing the luxury and glamour. His work with social class injustice has been the cover of many newspapers worldwide.

Richard Avedon passed out in October 2004 as a result of a brain hemorrage he had when he was working. From then onwards he has been beating records. One of his photographs, the most emblematic, was sold for as much as 840,000 euros a few years ago.

Let me show you now the images Monica and I selected and copy, during a very hot summer evening. A white background, a non-stop spotlight and a huge wish of learning and learning… I hope you like them!

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