honorable mention
Eduardo Lopez Moreno kenya
title
Concealment – Beyond Togetherness
Face concealment represents a different meaning and a way of being. It invites us to revise existing canons and conventions and rethink the forms of aesthetics. A self-inflicted isolation creates a high degree of social distance, building a boundary of privacy. It occludes thoughts, feelings and actions. The deliberated attempt for not being there, or being differently, is a rupture of reciprocity that causes some distress and changes our societal relations.
Without human faces, the images presented invite us to mediate values and attributes that are presented in a different form. By hiding their faces in different fabrics, the characters portrayed in this series explain something about them, and at the same time raise interrogations and doubts.
These images interrogate history and culture and make us rethink the notions of time and place, and predictability. They are darkness and revelation, questioning our capacity to read other societies.
The portraits are asymmetrical presences that more than defining something they represent it, bringing us to the ultimate level of otherness.
I like to travel and meet the world with its streets and its people, but the part that responds to my interest, my vision and philosophy of life. These images are a look at someone's world, a journey into their space and their life; an attempt to build a story without affection, but part of a social commitment.
I present different stories that intersect in the streets and in their plurality create a certain connection; a new sense. These images can be a set or a detail, an action, a look or a hand; a fixed temporality that captures movement. A piece of something that states a vaster space.
I believe that working with simple narratives of contrasted images, such as rich-poor, black-white or north-south, are deprived of any conceptual construct. It is about abusing simple photographic oppositions. I want to build visual bridges that bring closer different people, places and words, in an attempt to unit and integrate through symbols, images and spaces. The essence of parks, markets, religious celebrations, city functions, and movements of people, all reflect a way of being that after all have too many similarities and points in common in many parts of the world.
My images aim to reunite us with the common man, using a simple visual grammar that reveals the value of the everyday hidden life. Images that are the time of the people and the people in their time. This is particularly the case with the Refugee Camps.
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entry description
Introversion, reserve, shame or pride. Images of an inner world or a reflection of a wider cultural landscape? Visual symbols of a cryptic society. Initiation processes? Many reasons to conceal the face, many forms to present a portrait. Some suppress their personality for secrecy or avoidance, others to change our perception about them, others to seduce us. Yet, these unusual portraits convey another form of self-expression.Face concealment represents a different meaning and a way of being. It invites us to revise existing canons and conventions and rethink the forms of aesthetics. A self-inflicted isolation creates a high degree of social distance, building a boundary of privacy. It occludes thoughts, feelings and actions. The deliberated attempt for not being there, or being differently, is a rupture of reciprocity that causes some distress and changes our societal relations.
Without human faces, the images presented invite us to mediate values and attributes that are presented in a different form. By hiding their faces in different fabrics, the characters portrayed in this series explain something about them, and at the same time raise interrogations and doubts.
These images interrogate history and culture and make us rethink the notions of time and place, and predictability. They are darkness and revelation, questioning our capacity to read other societies.
The portraits are asymmetrical presences that more than defining something they represent it, bringing us to the ultimate level of otherness.
about the photographer
I am an architect, with a master in sociology and PhD in urban geography. I studied photography nearly 40 years ago. Currently, I am preparing a book of photography entitled “Streets of the World and Their People” with short narratives accompanying the photos. I am considered as a social photographer. (https://eduardolopezmorenophoto.com).I like to travel and meet the world with its streets and its people, but the part that responds to my interest, my vision and philosophy of life. These images are a look at someone's world, a journey into their space and their life; an attempt to build a story without affection, but part of a social commitment.
I present different stories that intersect in the streets and in their plurality create a certain connection; a new sense. These images can be a set or a detail, an action, a look or a hand; a fixed temporality that captures movement. A piece of something that states a vaster space.
I believe that working with simple narratives of contrasted images, such as rich-poor, black-white or north-south, are deprived of any conceptual construct. It is about abusing simple photographic oppositions. I want to build visual bridges that bring closer different people, places and words, in an attempt to unit and integrate through symbols, images and spaces. The essence of parks, markets, religious celebrations, city functions, and movements of people, all reflect a way of being that after all have too many similarities and points in common in many parts of the world.
My images aim to reunite us with the common man, using a simple visual grammar that reveals the value of the everyday hidden life. Images that are the time of the people and the people in their time. This is particularly the case with the Refugee Camps.
back to gallery