Days of Winter is a journey along a body: An exploration that aims to examine skin through the nudity of certain shapes.
I have conceived that journey as a search from the whole to the part, from a perspective of the entire body to a glance of fragments of such a body, from representation to abstraction. A soul is also there. There is a body, a hand, some lips. The body, hand and lips suggest the presence of a mind, an enigma of a person who searches for truth trough her body. Someone is asking: Who am I? Am I threatened? Am I awake or still sleeping? Who is looking at me? Am I alone? Is this a dream? A dream from whom?
The scope of Days of Winter is, consequently, twofold: a story and its narrative, and a visual journey. As a story, Days of Winter aims to place the viewer before a drama: A woman is shown, revealed only in part as if her body will deliver a monologue. A self-exploration, a journey again, but this time from the skin to the inside, to what is not shown, to what is hidden. There is also a sense of loss: The woman is not young. She was young once but is now reaching maturity.
As a visual journey, Days of Winter aims to present the body from a sculpture perspective, away from the conventional approach of idealising the female body by using concepts like Beauty. The nude in my series is abstracted to lines and shapes, dissected and rearranged. The flesh, its closeness, the clean, honest, direct representation of skin and parts of a body have been the clues, the light that has guided my exploration, my journey along a body. This approach when shooting has had its counterpart in my work with the prints. As a printer, I have been involved in a physical manner. In my darkroom, the prints are revealed as a physical object, worked by my hands and transformed by the action of chemicals. Trying to pursue the atmosphere, texture and tones of certain graphic arts, I have experimented with overexposing the film and increasing development times and by using hard papers. However, my goal is to go beyond that aesthetic through bleaching, toning and even through alternative processes like platinum-palladium.
About Roberto Cabrera
Self-taught amateur photographer, interested in Analog Black & White Photography. Fine Art Photography Awards 2017. Nominee. Three of his portfolios are featured on the Dodho Magazine website. One-man exhibition at the Raw Streetphoto Gallery (Rotterdam, 2019). Exhibition, with photographer Dominic Dähncke, at the Sala O’Daly Gallery (Santa Cruz de La Palma, Spain, 2018). First one-man exhibition at Kunstraum La Palma (Tazacorte, Spain, 2018) Licenciado (5 years degree) in Philosophy. Writer. Based in La Palma, Canary Islands. [Official Website]