Jesús Arenas´s works

I have been drawn to the city and constructed landscape since a young age. As a child I was interested (in a purely experiential way) in the peripheral, industrial zones and so-called "non-places" long before I knew that they could be studied or even photographed.

Not by chance, my first photographs portrayed these limit areas where I restless and fascinated wandered around, focusing on the discordant elements and ruptures of the urban fabric, while at the same time discovering the work of great photographers that had also traveled, experienced and loved the city: Manolo Laguillo, Humberto Rivas, Gabriele Basilico, Bob Thall, etc...

This insights into the city have led me to work on open series such as Plaça de Glòries. I started two years ago a ‘work in progress’ on that Barcelona square that has long been a kind of no man's land: recently it was decided to execute a definitive reform, transforming the space in interesting and unpredictable ways.

As a result of that type of works, I started focusing more and more each of the elements-cells that make up the city: the architecture of each place and building. For me, addressing architecture is an exercise of discovering ways of thinking halfway between the functional, philosophical and artistic, a compromises concoction that results very attractive to me. In this line I also work on open series focused on the architecture of cities such as Berlin, and planning new projects focused on (mostly) contemporary architects I feel led to, like Peter Zumthor.

In short, my photographic work mainly revolves around the skin and structure of the buildings, the sense of weight and balance, volume, and what I call "decisive light ": light as revealer of a certain truth of the place. I think the history of the photographic medium offers a vast field of study and resources needed for practicing a rigorous but intense architectural photography that can engage in a dialogue with architecture beyond a mere supposedly objective representation.

Text.- Jesús Arenas.