Miquel Galceran || Inèrcies

Barcelona based photographer Miquel Galceran recently submitted images from his series Inèrcies. I immediately liked the subtlety of these photographs. Translating the series title from Catalan to English I discovered it means Inertia. Ah, yes. I could see it as well as feel it. I almost could have known the meaning directly from the images before learning the translation. The inertia is soft and flowing with gentle movement. I asked Miquel to follow up with some thoughts about the series...

"I started this project about 2 years ago, coinciding with my last course at the University of Barcelona. During this time, besides relating to some different authors, more theoretical aspects of photography have aroused my interest, and all these things have been affecting my way of seeing."

 Miquel Galceran,  Inèrcies

"My work has an important autobiographical component, but not documentary. I'm not interested in explaining things with photography, for me, it's a tool to develop my feelings, and overall, in this case, to transform my thoughts, so I'm moving myself around or close to the suggestive. I think the verbal language tends to structure our mind in overly specific meanings. So, I don't want to do that with images. I suppose it's a base problem, words tend to repeat the same idea, filtering and immobilizing them again and again. However, there is a narrative."

Miquel Galceran,  Inèrcies

"What Inèrcies introduces is a kind of journey through a closed space, the space of a representation. So, it introduces and represents itself, as a group of decisions that our own reality dresses up, punctually or permanently. This flattens to understand, turns it necessarily to an object. In fact, the work is very rigid in itself. Maybe because it comes from the rejection of time, therefore it rejects the possibility and the wish."

Miquel Galceran,  Inèrcies

"Deep down, all these things have been pushing me to explore metalanguage, which in photography is something like talking about the invisible from the visible. And from there, be able to start drawing things beyond. Of course, I don't want to overload the reader with responsibility  I want to play with insinuation. In that sense, one of my best biggest influences is David Jimenez."

Miquel Galceran,  Inèrcies

"I think that is where I am right now, I suppose it has arisen in a natural way. It's something more free, confident and flexible, because it assumes my own doubt and indecision. Because I want to continue discovering things, I need to delete others. At the end of the day, it's about playing with that fragment you make visible and the rest which it hides. I try to notice all those less conscious things in my day to day life. So, I suppose what pushes me to take photographs, is the eagerness to ask myself questions. But, this has nothing to do with conceptual art. I simply stay within the abstract, because it's there where all these images are born."

Miquel Galceran,  Inèrcies

To see more from Miquel Galceran...

Miquel Galceran's Blog

Miquel Galceran's Website

John King || Bonavista

John King  From  Bonavista Peninsula

"The Bonavista Peninsula is on the east coast of the island of Newfoundland, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean.  The peninsula separates Trinity Bay and Bonavista Bay and has about 30 small coastal communities. I live about 100 km. (60 miles) from the town of Bonavista and visit the peninsula fairly frequently.

My first visit was in 1995 with my wife whose family is from this area. We had been living in the Toronto area for many years and during our vacation trip to the peninsula I fell in love with the place. One sunny afternoon on that trip we hiked out to the headland past Tickle Cove and watched a huge iceberg break up off shore. It was that on day that we made a pact that when our daughter graduated high school and left home for college we would try to move here. Emily graduated in June 1999 and in July I started work at the college in nearby Clarenville. The power of will.

This is a very rugged landscape. Newfoundlanders often refer affectionately to their home province as “The Rock”.  On the Bonavista Peninsula it’s easy to see why. There is very little topsoil and lots of exposed geological formations. You rarely see a house with a basement.

Some of the oldest permanent settlements in the province were established in this area in the decades following John Cabot’s voyage of discovery in 1497. Communities were started near natural harbours where the fishing boats could shelter from the sometimes vicious North Atlantic Ocean.  Homes were simple wood structures usually built by their owners; churches and schools were constructed by community volunteers.

I see a simple but strong beauty in this area. There is a built environment but the natural landscape retains an equal voice."

-John King  March, 2013

John King  Handmade book details

John King’s images explore formal composition with themes that often include a sense of place and human presence in the landscape. His work has been presented in various group and solo exhibitions in Canada. He lives in a small town in Newfoundland Canada. John has produced a small hand bound book from the images he produced on the Bonavista Peninsula. You can see a full preview of the book and some interesting production notes on John's blog, The Occasional Word.

John King's work is included in the 2012 exhibit Self Contained.

John King's website

Re-emergence

Medicine Wheel.  (2013)

In six years of editing PHOTO/arts Magazine I have never missed more than a week or two between posts. This is the first post of 2013, so it has been almost four months since I have written anything about art or photography. My mother passed away three weeks ago after a courageous battle with brain cancer. She started significantly declining just after New Year's day and died very peacefully at home on February 22nd.

One of the things we most shared in common was a love of art, and I consider my mother to be my most significant artistic mentor. She was a daily reader of this magazine and it stings to know this is the first post that she will not read and discuss with me. We shared countless hours talking about favorite photographers and exhibits. Her influence will always be with me.

Something that helped me get through the roughest stages of her illness was to spend time painting in my studio. I found it almost impossible to write about art, but the process of working with paints was very relaxing and cathartic. The image above is "Medicine Wheel", and will become a mixed media piece involving oil paint and metal sculpture. I have found it to be a very healing source of medicine indeed.

I am slowly emerging back into the world of online arts. I have lots of catching up to do. The Self Contained exhibit book is close to completion, but needs final editing. I hope to have it ready for publication by the end of this month.