Exhibition “The latent time” by Alfonso Vidal-Quadras

Photography is my means of expression. My work and passion is to capture an instant of the world with a camera and translate it into a static image, framed in a two-dimensional space.

Time
Photography is the stopping of time, the faithful and mechanical collection of a fraction of a second of reality. It is the painting of those who cannot draw, of the lazy, the impatient, who can produce perfectly proportioned images instantly at the press of a button on a portable device, with a few basic rules of operation.
I am bored by literalism even though it can be tremendously beautiful. Touching our souls, even. The very rules of the photographic medium give me the possibility to play and try to expand the aesthetic limits (focus, movement, framing, exposure, subject…). A mischief that relies on the chance that comes from taking the rules to the extreme and seeing what happens when I put “time”, “blur” or “darkness” (or whatever occupies me at the time) into the mixer. Look differently, explore the boundaries, like a curious and disobedient child. I can’t break the rules but I can move freely within their confines.
I find that there is something magical in the use of a slow shutter, a moment somewhat longer than that fraction of a second, that produces an image that vibrates, that beats with a life of its own contained in a still surface, begging to break out of that essential constraint.

Paper
The support, although it may not seem so, is key when it comes to displaying a photograph. It defines the contrast and the range of tones with which we want to present the image. Sometimes, as in this case, the support is a key part of the work: this entire exhibition is giclée on Ilford Torinoko Washi paper, a light, matte, subtle paper, perfect for moving images such as these. The charcoal drawing effect of the “Body Sketches” series would not be as evident on another surface; the nuances in the light tones or the moving make-up would not have the same effect, halfway between photography and illustration.

Beauty
My motto is “Beauty and simplicity will never go out of fashion”. I cannot dissociate one from the other: therein lies elegance, the third phantom pillar of my style, a result of the other two. I explore the limits of the concept of what is beautiful. I like the forms in space, the personality of the structures themselves. Sometimes undoing to the point of depersonalising or deforming, extracting and isolating. I explore the limits through the choice of the subject, the framing, the movement, the focus… and at the same time I remove leaves from the artichoke to keep the heart. Concrete, essential, simple, presented with my tricks to make it seem real and, above all, timeless and imperishable. Sometimes tactile, sometimes an idea, a dream.
I don’t draw, I pick up what the subject gives me in the scenario I propose, using the camera and its particular way of recording, and I let it surprise me. My ambition is to speak of beauty in that narrow frame of space and time stopped.

Alfonso Vidal-Quadras

Born in Barcelona in 1975. Graduated in Advertising and PR at the UAB, he opted for photography. Since then he is in a constant search for beauty through simplicity, always trying to apply that aesthetic in his work (mainly beauty, body and portrait) and in his personal projects.
He is curious to show people and scenes in a different way, he is obsessed by structure, graphic form and the possibility to convey an emotion through static images.

After living in London and Munich he currently lives in Barcelona.