Vertigo is inhaled upon excess. The explosion of reality arises upon an anguish born under the physical encounter with things.
Little happens on the ground, only from time to time emerges a horse, a soaring bird, a busting wave overcomes, a building piles up, a sky catches fire, a house goes into ruin. A life collapses, thenceforth elevates. [Jorge Villacorta]
Vertigo upon the very existence: to be born, to live, to die. Vertigo at the intensity, vertigo by contrasts. That timeless moment where the antipodes of an oxymoron meet. So beautiful to feel threatened? An overmuch of silence, that overwhelms? The concentration of emptiness, that overfills?
The desert welcomes and expulses; beauty empowers and frightens. Vertigo is intensified at the sight: the majesty of the waves, the sound of the wind, the sculptural forms of fire. The territory is governed by an inanimate being; all is God. There is no time: everything is happening and every moment is stopped: breathless.
Gihan Tubbeh is a peruvian photographer with a really intuitive and powerful relation with photography. She photographs emotions and the human condition with a really raw and fuzzy gaze questioning the reality of our world, as cruel and as tender as it is. Her work explores the spiritual and perceptual of the human experience with a special interest in universal themes such as birth and death, desire and love, pain and ideas of loss, impossible returns.
This exploration starts from the documentary and the imaginary, alternating reality with fiction and the autobiographic. The idea of survival is a persistent statement in her projects; the struggle for belonging, to attach and detach, life as a constant transformation between its own contradictions.
Gihan shoots intuitively, finding beauty in the accident and resource in the error, looking for images to invent more questions than answers. The lack of visual information makes us reevaluate our perceptions of reality, turning those indefinite images into emotional landscapes, a transformation of the physical into the psychological.
Gihan´s images insinuate, they do not explain; some come soft, others blow. Her work focuses on universal human feelings, on those inherited and deep-rooted instincts, finding beauty where apparently there is none. In her projects, opposites bond and coexist; tenderness and violence, vulnerability and power, beauty and horror, the romantic with the wild.
About Gihan Tubbeh
Gihan Tubbeh (1984), Lima-Peru. Studied photography at Centro de la Imagen, after following three years on cinematography at University of Lima, also in the Peruvian capital. On 2009, she was one of the twelve photographers who joined the Joop Swart Masterclass of World Press Photo. On 2010, Gihan won the 1st prize in Daily Life stories of the World Press Photo competition. The same year, she was selected to join Reflexions Masterclass directed by Giorgia Fiorio during the next three years in different locations around Europe. On 2011, she is chosen as Photographer of the Year of the Pictures of the Year International (POYI) LAT. Her work has been exhibited in France, Spain, China, Peru, Brazil, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Greece, Ireland, U.S., Guatemala, among others. She has participated in numerous interational festivals of photography as DALI International Photography Festival, Les Recontres d’Arles, Noorderlicht Photofestival, Obscura Festival Of Photography, Paraty em Foco, Dali International Photography Festival, Foro Latinoamericano de Fotografía de Sao Paulo, PhotoIreland. [Official Website]
