The Image Has Swallowed Photography
The Image Has Swallowed Photography
“Photography is a mirror of the world but also a loudspeaker of the soul,” says the artist Roger Grasas. The Catalan photographer, who was one of the first to be able to portray the Saudi royalty when the country’s religious police still considered photography an illegal act, has been showing that reflection of the world but also of himself for years. The human condition, travels, religion, spirituality, globalization, and technology converge in several of his series, which have led him to discover the world for decades, and create a visual compendium of how change is the only constant in the world, as well as in ourselves.
Photography has allowed you to see the world, something you have always wanted. Apart from this, what caught you about photography? When did you know you wanted to dedicate yourself to this?
I think it was during adolescence. In the midst of the turbulence that accompanies the discovery of one’s own personality, I turned to photography in the task of defining identity. And although I was only 13 or 14 years old, the photographs of my childhood served to connect the present with the past through a feeling that I have always associated with the photographic image: nostalgia. The bittersweet feeling of longing for a past moment and the unsuccessful desire to stop time were what initially captivated me about photography. Later I would discover that photography can also be a good method of knowledge and connection with reality.
You combine photography for commissions with being a professor and with the realization of your personal projects. Is it difficult to live as a photographer today?
In general, yes it is. During these last two decades, the implementation of digital image technologies together with the expansion of the internet has generated a series of consequences that have greatly affected the profession. Until the end of the 20th century, the photographer was a kind of ‘artisan’ of light who dominated techniques and equipment that were indecipherable for most of the population. The arrival of digital photography democratized photography and its technologies. Quickly, photography has become a universal language, with the corresponding loss of status of the professional photographer within a market with a high degree of competition. The image has swallowed photography.
The publishing sector has been in crisis for more than a decade and an important part of the advertising photography market no longer seeks quality but prioritizes speed and an aesthetic designed more for volatile screens than for printed paper. In industrialized countries, today we are all creators and readers of photographs, and we all carry a photographic camera in our pocket. Video has also occupied an important part of the market that was previously photography’s.
But we live in a very paradoxical world. Despite the declining panorama of the profession, the world of artistic photography has never been so high. There are authors who sell photographs for hundreds of thousands of dollars, even millions. And the eagerness to represent reality through the photographic image has never been so present in society as it is now. Everything, absolutely everything is photographed. The first thing that happens to a baby when it is born today, when the umbilical cord has not even been cut, is that someone takes a photo of it. Photography is still magic.
But we live in a very paradoxical world. Despite the declining panorama of the profession, the world of artistic photography has never been so high. There are authors who sell photographs for hundreds of thousands of dollars, even millions. And the eagerness to represent reality through the photographic image has never been so present in society as it is now. Everything, absolutely everything is photographed. The first thing that happens to a baby when it is born today, when the umbilical cord has not even been cut, is that someone takes a photo of it. Photography is still magic.
You have said that photography has allowed you to know yourself. A few months ago, in an interview with Marita Alonso about her new book Si echas de menos el principio vuelve a empezar, we talked about how important self-knowledge was and how sometimes we avoid it. How has photography driven you to self-knowledge?
I think that photography, consciously or unconsciously, ends up becoming a way of pointing out the themes that interest one. And those themes end up converging in reality in a conceptual framework that has its correlation with the very character of each photographer. Therefore, I believe that, in some way, revealing the universe of a photographer is synonymous with also revealing the inner world that sometimes, because it is so close, one does not notice. In my case, at least, there is something of this. When I repeatedly direct the camera towards a certain type of situations or scenes it is because in those situations there are scenes there is something that ‘catches’ me –with the years, this exercise becomes therapeutic.
Through your different personal projects you have photographed the technological or capitalist change that the world has been experiencing. When did you start focusing on this topic?
It is difficult to say the exact moment, but I think it was when I started traveling more or less continuously, there at the end of the 90s. It was a time when the concept of globalization was clearly established. The combination of capitalism with technology seemed to model an increasingly sophisticated and indecipherable world even though globalization promised a homogeneous world.
Perhaps it was fate, or a simple turn of life, but you ended up settling in Riyadh when a princess from Saudi Arabia hired you to take the photos of her wedding. Was it a turning point in your career?
Absolutely. There have been others, but this was undoubtedly one of the most crucial. That commission has involved fifteen years of travel through the Middle East and two long-term projects, Min Turab and Ha Aretz.
“I think that, in some way, revealing the universe of a photographer is synonymous with also revealing the inner world that sometimes, because it is so close, one does not notice.”
Precisely in Min Turab you explore the new Arab landscape that has emerged from a social, cultural, landscape and aesthetic transformation. It is a project that brings together photographs taken between 2010 and 2017. Given that it comprises a fairly long period of time, what difficulties did you face during these years?
From the outset, when I arrived in Saudi Arabia, photography was officially prohibited by Koranic law. Taking photos in the street could be penalized by the mutawwa –the Saudi religious police–, and when I traveled throughout the Arabian Peninsula for my Min Turab project I was interrogated on repeated occasions. It was also a time when the nascent jihadist terrorism had caused havoc in Saudi Arabia itself, and that did not help.
“The problem of our times is that the future is no longer what it used to be,” said Paul Valéry. You use this phrase to introduce the At€nea
It seems clear that when we talk about the future (or even the present), it no longer belongs to Europe or America. It is the turn of Asia, as a hegemonic civilization for the 21st century. In recent decades, Europe has demonstrated selfishness and great inconsistency as a project. The facticity of the economy has swallowed the ‘posturing’ of politics (not to mention ethics), and with it the social has been diluted. Those who have been elected do not govern, and those who govern have not been elected.
Europe has therefore become a mere continent, an impenetrable bastion inside which there is nothing more than defense: the infamous policy on the issue of refugees and the rise of ultra-right-wing populisms confirm this. The West has shattered the categorical imperative as the foundation of a universal Kantian ethic that understood humanity as an end and not as a means to achieve something.
Hotel, dulce hotel is another of your photographic series, a kind of sociology of travel through capturing different hotels. Do you think about the themes of the series beforehand and then carry out a photographic exploration, or is it something that you find along the way and then it takes shape?
My long-term works usually come as a consequence of a previous personal experience that is subsequently conceptualized and becomes a project. In this specific case it is also like this, what’s more, I would say that it is a kind of work in progress without beginning or end, a project that oscillates around the idea of travel as a modus vivendi. Precisely this year I have decided to put a point and apart, collect the material of two decades, edit it and publish it in photo book format.
“To a greater or lesser degree I believe that all creators show and represent ourselves through the work. Photography is a mirror of the world but also a loudspeaker of the soul.”
“The artist must paint not only what he sees in front of him, but also what he sees inside him,” said the painter David Friedrich. This phrase has reminded me of your photographs, because in each of them you portray something much more extensive than the superficial. What do you think about it?
I fully agree. To a greater or lesser degree I believe that all creators show and represent ourselves through the work. Photography is a mirror of the world but also a loudspeaker of the soul.
You were going to participate in the Lumínic Festival this year, which like the rest of the photo and music festivals, must cancel this year’s edition and move it to 2021. Covid-19 has truncated all our plans and expectations, how is it affecting you? How are you coping with confinement, and what are you doing to cope with quarantine?
This pandemic has many possible analyses and consequences. Beyond the obvious biomedical drama that it has caused, it is clear that it has put other spheres of humanity in check, especially the economic one, given the globalized nature of today’s world. Today everything is interconnected: the economy, culture, leisure, fashion, etc. but also terrorism, drug trafficking and, in this case, diseases.
In my case, the pandemic has negatively affected me on a professional level due to the cancellation of several commissions, presentations, festivals and a couple of exhibitions. But on the other hand, on a personal level, this temporary parenthesis has been enormously positive. It has been a real gift to be able to enjoy three months of family life with my partner and our ten-month-old daughter. In addition, we are lucky enough to live in a house in the heart of Collserola, here the confinement has been experienced in another way.
This suspended time has also allowed me to advance in photographic projects that I had in the ‘drawer’ and for which there was often no time. The accelerated world in which we lived has been miraculously paralyzed and the important has been able to pass in front of the urgent. I hope we retain this lesson!
“Photography is a mirror of the world but also a loudspeaker of the soul,” says the artist Roger Grasas. The Catalan photographer, who was one of the first to be able to portray the Saudi royalty when the country’s religious police still considered photography an illegal act, has been showing that reflection of the world but also of himself for years. The human condition, travels, religion, spirituality, globalization, and technology converge in several of his series, which have led him to discover the world for decades, and create a visual compendium of how change is the only constant in the world, as well as in ourselves.
Photography has allowed you to see the world, something you have always wanted. Apart from this, what caught you about photography? When did you know you wanted to dedicate yourself to this?
I think it was during adolescence. In the midst of the turbulence that accompanies the discovery of one’s own personality, I turned to photography in the task of defining identity. And although I was only 13 or 14 years old, the photographs of my childhood served to connect the present with the past through a feeling that I have always associated with the photographic image: nostalgia. The bittersweet feeling of longing for a past moment and the unsuccessful desire to stop time were what initially captivated me about photography. Later I would discover that photography can also be a good method of knowledge and connection with reality.
You combine photography for commissions with being a professor and with the realization of your personal projects. Is it difficult to live as a photographer today?
In general, yes it is. During these last two decades, the implementation of digital image technologies together with the expansion of the internet has generated a series of consequences that have greatly affected the profession. Until the end of the 20th century, the photographer was a kind of ‘artisan’ of light who dominated techniques and equipment that were indecipherable for most of the population. The arrival of digital photography democratized photography and its technologies. Quickly, photography has become a universal language, with the corresponding loss of status of the professional photographer within a market with a high degree of competition. The image has swallowed photography.
The publishing sector has been in crisis for more than a decade and an important part of the advertising photography market no longer seeks quality but prioritizes speed and an aesthetic designed more for volatile screens than for printed paper. In industrialized countries, today we are all creators and readers of photographs, and we all carry a photographic camera in our pocket. Video has also occupied an important part of the market that was previously photography’s.
But we live in a very paradoxical world. Despite the declining panorama of the profession, the world of artistic photography has never been so high. There are authors who sell photographs for hundreds of thousands of dollars, even millions. And the eagerness to represent reality through the photographic image has never been so present in society as it is now. Everything, absolutely everything is photographed. The first thing that happens to a baby when it is born today, when the umbilical cord has not even been cut, is that someone takes a photo of it. Photography is still magic.
But we live in a very paradoxical world. Despite the declining panorama of the profession, the world of artistic photography has never been so high. There are authors who sell photographs for hundreds of thousands of dollars, even millions. And the eagerness to represent reality through the photographic image has never been so present in society as it is now. Everything, absolutely everything is photographed. The first thing that happens to a baby when it is born today, when the umbilical cord has not even been cut, is that someone takes a photo of it. Photography is still magic.
You have said that photography has allowed you to know yourself. A few months ago, in an interview with Marita Alonso about her new book Si echas de menos el principio vuelve a empezar, we talked about how important self-knowledge was and how sometimes we avoid it. How has photography driven you to self-knowledge?
I think that photography, consciously or unconsciously, ends up becoming a way of pointing out the themes that interest one. And those themes end up converging in reality in a conceptual framework that has its correlation with the very character of each photographer. Therefore, I believe that, in some way, revealing the universe of a photographer is synonymous with also revealing the inner world that sometimes, because it is so close, one does not notice. In my case, at least, there is something of this. When I repeatedly direct the camera towards a certain type of situations or scenes it is because in those situations there are scenes there is something that ‘catches’ me –with the years, this exercise becomes therapeutic.
Through your different personal projects you have photographed the technological or capitalist change that the world has been experiencing. When did you start focusing on this topic?
It is difficult to say the exact moment, but I think it was when I started traveling more or less continuously, there at the end of the 90s. It was a time when the concept of globalization was clearly established. The combination of capitalism with technology seemed to model an increasingly sophisticated and indecipherable world even though globalization promised a homogeneous world.
Perhaps it was fate, or a simple turn of life, but you ended up settling in Riyadh when a princess from Saudi Arabia hired you to take the photos of her wedding. Was it a turning point in your career?
Absolutely. There have been others, but this was undoubtedly one of the most crucial. That commission has involved fifteen years of travel through the Middle East and two long-term projects, Min Turab and Ha Aretz.
“I think that, in some way, revealing the universe of a photographer is synonymous with also revealing the inner world that sometimes, because it is so close, one does not notice.”
Precisely in Min Turab you explore the new Arab landscape that has emerged from a social, cultural, landscape and aesthetic transformation. It is a project that brings together photographs taken between 2010 and 2017. Given that it comprises a fairly long period of time, what difficulties did you face during these years?
From the outset, when I arrived in Saudi Arabia, photography was officially prohibited by Koranic law. Taking photos in the street could be penalized by the mutawwa –the Saudi religious police–, and when I traveled throughout the Arabian Peninsula for my Min Turab project I was interrogated on repeated occasions. It was also a time when the nascent jihadist terrorism had caused havoc in Saudi Arabia itself, and that did not help.
“The problem of our times is that the future is no longer what it used to be,” said Paul Valéry. You use this phrase to introduce the At€nea
It seems clear that when we talk about the future (or even the present), it no longer belongs to Europe or America. It is the turn of Asia, as a hegemonic civilization for the 21st century. In recent decades, Europe has demonstrated selfishness and great inconsistency as a project. The facticity of the economy has swallowed the ‘posturing’ of politics (not to mention ethics), and with it the social has been diluted. Those who have been elected do not govern, and those who govern have not been elected.
Europe has therefore become a mere continent, an impenetrable bastion inside which there is nothing more than defense: the infamous policy on the issue of refugees and the rise of ultra-right-wing populisms confirm this. The West has shattered the categorical imperative as the foundation of a universal Kantian ethic that understood humanity as an end and not as a means to achieve something.
Hotel, dulce hotel is another of your photographic series, a kind of sociology of travel through capturing different hotels. Do you think about the themes of the series beforehand and then carry out a photographic exploration, or is it something that you find along the way and then it takes shape?
My long-term works usually come as a consequence of a previous personal experience that is subsequently conceptualized and becomes a project. In this specific case it is also like this, what’s more, I would say that it is a kind of work in progress without beginning or end, a project that oscillates around the idea of travel as a modus vivendi. Precisely this year I have decided to put a point and apart, collect the material of two decades, edit it and publish it in photo book format.
“To a greater or lesser degree I believe that all creators show and represent ourselves through the work. Photography is a mirror of the world but also a loudspeaker of the soul.”
“The artist must paint not only what he sees in front of him, but also what he sees inside him,” said the painter David Friedrich. This phrase has reminded me of your photographs, because in each of them you portray something much more extensive than the superficial. What do you think about it?
I fully agree. To a greater or lesser degree I believe that all creators show and represent ourselves through the work. Photography is a mirror of the world but also a loudspeaker of the soul.
You were going to participate in the Lumínic Festival this year, which like the rest of the photo and music festivals, must cancel this year’s edition and move it to 2021. Covid-19 has truncated all our plans and expectations, how is it affecting you? How are you coping with confinement, and what are you doing to cope with quarantine?
This pandemic has many possible analyses and consequences. Beyond the obvious biomedical drama that it has caused, it is clear that it has put other spheres of humanity in check, especially the economic one, given the globalized nature of today’s world. Today everything is interconnected: the economy, culture, leisure, fashion, etc. but also terrorism, drug trafficking and, in this case, diseases.
In my case, the pandemic has negatively affected me on a professional level due to the cancellation of several commissions, presentations, festivals and a couple of exhibitions. But on the other hand, on a personal level, this temporary parenthesis has been enormously positive. It has been a real gift to be able to enjoy three months of family life with my partner and our ten-month-old daughter. In addition, we are lucky enough to live in a house in the heart of Collserola, here the confinement has been experienced in another way.
This suspended time has also allowed me to advance in photographic projects that I had in the ‘drawer’ and for which there was often no time. The accelerated world in which we lived has been miraculously paralyzed and the important has been able to pass in front of the urgent. I hope we retain this lesson!
