English / Español

I believe in the presence of the images rather than in their meaning. The immediacy with which they generate echoes in our consciousness is prior to any rational enunciation of their sense. I am interested in the relations between thought and images, the way in which the latter, from their silence, trigger language and processes of symbolization in the viewer. I am fascinated by what photography has of unspeakable, not only in its sensorial dimension but also in its capacity to evoke emotions and arouse effects of meaning that cannot be exhausted by the simple verbal description of what is represented. Irreducible to the rational, the photographic experience is resistant to words as well as it summons them.

There are many aspects of photography that interest me and many ways in which I use it. My approach and my style can vary from one project to another without the need for pretexts. I experience photography as a live process in its own right, rather than as speech or message. The concepts that permeate my work are inherent in the process of its creation, but this is neither intended to produce univocal meanings nor to illustrate preconceived ideas or dissertations. Its sense, if it has to have one, is more related to the poetic capacity of the images to generate resonances and to provoke in the receiver different experiences, not necessarily based on the communicative logic that governs other forms of expression.

I am currently developing a continuous body of work composed of several ongoing series to which time adds new elements in an organic way. Through the edit and juxtaposition, the images are placed in a sort of associative structure where the poetic prevails over the explanatory. This structure, deliberately ambiguous, serves as a framework of confluence and tensions between representation, perception and subjective significance. Fragments of existence, symbolic elements and cross-references are grouped and recomposed as a timeless sum of contemplative states. Visions, instants of reality and unreality converge and get confused in the impenetrable and fictitious space of photography.

Francisco Riego