honorable mention
Lucas Garcete spain
Photo © Lucas Garcete
title
Hymns to the Night
In this world, where there is a constant fading of the mythological, imaginary construction becomes crucial to preserve our capacity for artistic communication, giving us legitimacy as human beings. Photography, like the night, bears witness to the merciless dissolution of time and life, and as in a nocturnal retraction, takes us from the unfathomable vastness of the world to the innermost depths of our being.
Through a restrained monochrome language, Garcete constructs symbolic scenes that move between photographic trace and imaginative reconstruction. Recurrent motifs such as masks, mythic figures, and metamorphic bodies are used to explore themes of mortality, memory, and the transformation of identity.
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entry description
‘Hymns to the Night’, inspired by the book by the Romantic poet Novalis (1772-1801), constitute a set of photographic collages that explore the night, love beyond death and the human longing to connect with an abstract and eternal entity, accessible only through the nocturnal. Using advanced digital editing techniques, traditional night scenes are transformed into artistic compositions that reveal an abstract and emotional dimension of night, seeing it not only as the absence of day, but as an emotional and conceptual state. This transformation allows the symbolic aspects of night to be explored, creating a visually rich and conceptually complex experience. By combining multiple photographic exposures of desolate rivers and landscapes with figures and objects - from antlers, graves, cages and crescent moons to statues and Victorian costumes - surreal compositions are achieved that go beyond physical reality. The series aims to challenge conventional photographic perceptions, offering a deeply personal and creative interpretation of the concept of night, creating a space in which we can take refuge from the flow of time.In this world, where there is a constant fading of the mythological, imaginary construction becomes crucial to preserve our capacity for artistic communication, giving us legitimacy as human beings. Photography, like the night, bears witness to the merciless dissolution of time and life, and as in a nocturnal retraction, takes us from the unfathomable vastness of the world to the innermost depths of our being.
about the photographer
Lucas Garcete (b. 2000) is a Spanish visual artist working primarily with black-and-white conceptual photography. His practice combines staged silhouettes, contralight, and layered digital manipulation to reduce the human figure to an allegorical form rather than an individual subject.Through a restrained monochrome language, Garcete constructs symbolic scenes that move between photographic trace and imaginative reconstruction. Recurrent motifs such as masks, mythic figures, and metamorphic bodies are used to explore themes of mortality, memory, and the transformation of identity.
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