Impulse

Juan loves pho­tog­ra­phy. When I met him at Peter Turnley’s pho­tog­ra­phy work­shop in Paris, he absolutely radi­ated enthu­si­asm for the art. We often met for din­ner each day after shoot­ing our assign­ments: Juan cov­er­ing the Pont des Arts, myself, the Jardin des Tuileries. One night, after dis­cussing art, com­put­ers, and women (what else do thir­tysome­thing male techie pho­tog­ra­phers talk about?) he showed me the portable port­fo­lio he caries with him every­where. I was blown away. Juan’s work had a great graphic dynamism and sense of place. Since then, I’ve been fol­low­ing his work via his pho­to­blog and must say that it’s only got­ten bet­ter and better.

Juan’s excel­lent sense of graphic design is clear and has become more refined over time. Back in that Paris port­fo­lio, the graphic ele­ment that was cap­ti­vat­ing, but seemed to dom­i­nate over the sub­jects. The design in Juan’s recent work is just as strong, but now he inte­grates the design into the photo so that it sup­ports the sub­ject almost invis­i­bly. Geometric shapes are every­where — tri­an­gles formed by faces (sim­i­lar to Doisneau’s tech­nique of com­pos­ing using the shapes of let­ters), lines of out­stretched arms and slant­ing cor­ri­dors — all cre­at­ing an energy that draws out the sub­ject as it draws me to the photo. It is as if the graphic ele­ments draw my atten­tion uncon­sciously to the photo so that the sub­ject can intro­duce itself to me. It’s an ele­ment that I aspire to add to my own pho­tos which often have only one sub­ject, located about a third of the way from an edge, with the hori­zon res­olutely level.
Time is another ele­ment. It’s easy to take a pic­ture that looks like time has stopped — that’s how cam­eras work after all. It’s another thing to take a pic­ture that feels like time has stopped: traf­fic noises stop, you can hear the silence between sec­onds. Emotions are clear and unmuf­fled by move­ment. All that remains is a moment in life. This is the ulti­mate goal of those of us who do street pho­tog­ra­phy, and I think Juan cap­tures it well. I can feel time freeze and wait for me to take in the scene. Sometimes the effect is dra­matic — a still­ness in a bustling city — and some­times it’s a rest on a quiet day.

Stopping time like this mag­ni­fies the emo­tional imme­di­acy of the moment. Juan uses this to his advan­tage in cap­tur­ing inti­mate moments between peo­ple, par­tic­u­larly lovers or chil­dren.
Now, it may be the Latin blood that flows through his veins, but I find that Juan also is excel­lent at pho­tograph­ing attrac­tive women. I don’t know if he’s con­scious of it or not, but they’re every­where in his pho­tos (as are cou­ples in love, chil­dren play­ing, and men con­vers­ing).
On a tech­ni­cal note, I really enjoy the tonal palette Juan uses in pre­sent­ing his work. He prints his images a just a lit­tle dark which gives them a rich, thick tex­ture. He then prints the sub­jects of the photo a lit­tle lighter with more con­trast than the rest. This is a com­mon tech­nique, but Juan man­ages to take it to an extreme with­out being dis­tract­ing. Look at the photo below — it’s a great photo of a boy. Now look at the boy. He’s much lighter than any of the other peo­ple in the scene — dra­mat­i­cally more than I do in my own work. Yet, it’s not glar­ing. It feels appro­pri­ate, even nat­ural. It’s a style that, to me, is uniquely Juan’s.

Personally, I see Juan in each of these pic­tures. He’s right there in the crowd. I once saw a short film that showed Henri Cartier-Bresson pho­tograph­ing a scene in a crowd. He moved swiftly in and around peo­ple, con­fi­dently tak­ing pho­tos. When I look at Juan’s pho­tos, I see Juan qui­etly snap­ping pho­tos like that.

(photo by Rob McKaughan)

Links

• Water Molotov — Juan’s pho­to­blog. There’s lots of good stuff here. Go. Now.
• Synecdoche — Juan’s blog
• Juan’s new employer — con­grat­u­la­tions Juan!
• Update: Juan on flickr

More pics:

Related posts:

1. CoolArt: Masahiro Makino
2. Faces in a crowd
3. 15 min­utes of fame
4. CA: Robert Doisneau
5. A lit­tle more action, please