My photographic vocation is born from the tireless search for “the light” that is capable of illuminating a personal world full of shadows.
A complicated, introspective, passionate and poetic journey from which I nourish myself to interpret my most intimate universe, a path that goes hand in hand and in communion with several disciplines of the Fine Arts.
My work is not born or presented with the aim of reflecting the skill in the execution of which I can be capable, nor by the capacity of sharpness that today offers the technique, with millions of megapixels at our service.
The work presented is the long and elaborate result of a creative process, which has led me to study and develop work, for decades of different artistic trends and disciplines, and found in the language of photography a way of expression, a way “mannerist” to create art. My dreams, beliefs or passions find in photography a way of dreamlike expression.
My work experience in the world of interior architecture, antiques or the importance of color in the different countries where I have lived, brings me closer to the pictorialist photographic movement of the nineteenth century, the “chiaroscuro” of Caravaggio, the light of the Venezuelan master Armando Reverón and very remarkable cinematographic or scenographic references.
The “flou effect” bathes part of my photographs as a form of protest against the current analogical academic purism, as well as the timeless themes that I approach go against certain photographic currents; linked to grotesque and scandalous proposals raised by recent gurus, simple art dealers.
My work seeks to be a long-distance race, faithful and loyal to my personal nonconformism, which has marked my whole life, a permanent struggle between classicism and the rupture of the established.
The purpose in my photographic path is to be able to investigate and incorporate new ways of creating an image and to be able to come to understand each image as a work of art. An aesthetic composition, with its own entity and history.
Exclusive photographs limited by their print run and size that escape from the resolution capacity or skill in the handling of the technique, but not because of that, they are precious or baroque with a profusion of details, full of hidden allegories and labyrinths hidden in their shadows, fabrics and textures.
In the edition and final composition of the images I incorporate the most current digital and painting techniques, as a complement to my works. A pictorialist photography that drinks of the influences of the Swedish Óscar Gustave Rejlander and the English Henry Peach Robinson or Oscar Gustave Rejlander and numerous influences of the filmic language like Bertolucci or Visconti.
About Diego Orlando
Diego Orlando was born in San Sebastian, Basque Country, Spain. Years of flight and exile have marked his whole life from an early adolescence with his continuous changes of residence in different Spanish cities: Navarre, Andalusia and Castile and French. His stays in Paris and London were decisive in initiating a new artistic vision by coming into contact with museums, artistic trends and diverse cultural options. For more than two decades, Diego Orlando found in interior architecture a profession (which he studied at the Universidad Complutense Madrid) and in the appraisal of antiques of art works a business of his own; both disciplines gave him a greater understanding and knowledge of the art world. During his long stay in America (Caracas, 2007-2016) Diego retakes his studies of painting and sculpture and begins to explore photography in a non-professional way. At the beginning of 2016 he moved to Catalonia to take the Master’s Degree in Creative Photography, which he studied for two full years until the end of 2017. Between 2017 and 2018 he dedicated himself to producing his photographic series “La mirada De Goya” for which he was awarded the best photographer of 2018, in the fine art and book categories, of the prestigious International Photography Award, known as IPA. From 2018 to the present, he has been preparing a series on “Saints and Mantillas” inspired by the lives of the martyrs and virgins of Christian culture, all from a current and contemporary point of view. During the year 2019 some of his works have been selected by the magazine Vogue Italia and auctioned at the Teatro Real in Madrid for the benefit of Thribune, an International Foundation dedicated to the defence of human rights. In the year 2019 and early 2020 I exhibit at the Museum and 2020 LACDA Los Angeles Center for Digital Ar. (EEUU). Honourable Mention IPA (International Fine Awards) in 2021. Nominated for the Fine Arts Photography Awards (FAPA) in 2021. Exhibition in Rome at the Sala Millepiani selected by Loosenart. Selected to participate in the Florence Art Biennale in 2021. [Official Website]