As photographers, we are always on the other side, looking at life through our viewfinder, selecting what interests us, cropping what our eyes see through the chosen framing, stopping time at the precise moment.
All in an endeavor, surely futile, to try to order, interpret, and give meaning to that amorphous, boundless, and incomprehensible reality.
The final result, the photographs, tells us as much about the object represented as about the personality of the author. To a great extent, “we see what we are,” as Ernst Haas said.
In this work that I present, this idea of looking at what is on the other side of oneself is reinforced by the fact that these are shots taken from the other side of the glass, or images in which the attention is focused not on the subject itself but on the reflection or the shadow. The result in many of these photos is that reality appears distorted, blurred, indistinct, in some cases even reaching abstraction; in others, this idea of “the other side” is expressed by physical elements, such as fences, gates, etc., that separate us from what lies outside, even though they allow glimpses of it. The trick here, therefore, is plain to see; the deception becomes evident, manifest. Are these images perhaps more deceitful? As Onetti said, “You can lie in many ways, but the worst of all is to tell the truth…” “or pretend to,” I would add. Perhaps the final result, distorted, blurred, indistinct, dirty images, better represents the essence of reality.
And yes, I suppose these photos also speak of me, of my solitary nature, of my interest in going unnoticed; and perhaps reflected in them, although I was not aware of it at the moment of shooting, are my obsessions with basic conflicts: chaos and meaning, reality and the representation of reality, truth and lies in art, fragmentation and totality of meaning, etc.
About Ramón Medina
Ramón Medina considers himself, above all, a documentary photographer, in the sense that he photographs what he sees without resorting to preparation or staging. At the same time, there is perhaps an inner drive that leads him to try to order the world and extract meaning from the confusion of forms.
For Medin, photography means going out with his camera, sometimes with an idea in mind and often without any specific purpose, while remaining attentive to the stories unfolding around him in order to capture them and fix them in an image. He is not against the idea of a photographic project, but he is one of those who believe that a good photograph cannot be explained; it must tell something by itself.
Although he has taken some courses, mainly in studio photography, which is not his field, Medin does not consider himself an expert in photographic technique. He strongly agrees with the idea that “the photographer’s main instrument is his eyes,” and believes he can see things that others do not see. He also feels he has enough technical knowledge to capture them and turn them into images that reflect not only what he experienced, but also what he felt at that moment. This is what he seeks through photography: to capture the life that slips away, the emotion of the moment, to bear witness to it and, in some way, preserve it.
In 2012, he held an exhibition at the Alvargonzález Foundation in Gijón entitled Mar de fondo. In 2018, he received a “New Talents” grant at the Gijón Photographic Meetings, and part of his project Off Season was exhibited at the Barjola Museum in the same city. In 2021, three of his photographs were exhibited in Gijón and Oviedo as part of PhotoEspaña’s Desde mi balcón project.
He was selected to participate in the PhotoEspaña 2023 Discoveries portfolio reviews with his project Fuera de temporada. The following year, he was selected again for the PhotoEspaña 2024 Discoveries portfolio reviews, this time with the project Lo que me dicen los árboles. That same year, one of his photographs was a finalist in PhotoEspaña’s Urban Tours contest and was exhibited at One Shot Fortuny 07 in Madrid, the official hotel of the PhotoEspaña festival.
