Before taking a photograph, I need to get to know the place.
My process begins with research: consulting archives, documents, plans, publications, testimonies and any information that can help me understand what I am photographing. A photograph does not stand alone; it is part of a story, a territory and an experience.
In projects such as Valores Declarados, this research has led me to explore the history of a building and of communications over many years, bringing historical documents into dialogue with the spaces that still remain. Research also means learning to look: discovering what happened in a place, what has changed and what traces remain.
PROCESS
DOCUMENTING THE PRESENT IS PRESERVING THE MEMORY OF THE FUTURE
1. A PERSPECTIVE BUILT OVER TIME
2. RESEARCH
Then comes the time to observe.
I move through the spaces without immediately looking for an image. I’m interested in discovering how architecture, objects, traces of use, light and the passage of time relate to one another.
Based on these observations, I decide what I want to photograph and what I want to say. Sometimes I start with a specific idea; at other times, the space itself gives rise to an unexpected image.
My perspective shifts between documentation and the conceptual. I may photograph an architectural feature to record its existence, but I may also isolate a detail, texture or shape to create a different reading.
3. ENTERING THE PLACE
Some of my projects take place in spaces with restricted access. For this reason, the process also begins with obtaining the necessary permits to work there.
Once the project is approved, I plan the spaces I want to explore, the time available and the working conditions.
Planning is important, but I don’t aim to fully control what happens in front of the camera. I leave room for discovery.
I pay special attention to light, viewpoints, perspectives, the relationships between elements, and details that might otherwise go unnoticed.
4. DEVELOPING THE PROJECT
For me, photography is a way of being inside a place.
I mainly work with a digital camera and RAW files, aiming to retain as much information as possible so I can decide later how to build the image.
Choosing the frame is essential.
I am particularly interested in frontal viewpoints, perspectives and vanishing points, but also in fragments, details and subtle changes that appear on surfaces and objects.
Light plays an essential role.
In interior spaces, it can completely transform the same scene: reveal a texture, darken an area, highlight a trace or change how we perceive the architecture.
I am not simply looking to show what a space looks like. I want the photograph to convey its time, its use and what has been left behind.
5. PERMISSIONS AND PLANNING
An essential part of my work is returning.
Returning to the same place months or years later allows me to see what has changed and what has remained. A wall, a door, an installation, a mark on the floor or an abandoned object can become a witness to transformation.
That is why some of my projects take shape over long periods of time. Repetition does not mean taking the same photograph; it means looking again from a different point in time.
Photography thus becomes a tool for documenting change.
Photography preserves what time transforms.
6. THE PHOTOGRAPHIC FORM
After photographing comes another essential part of the process: selecting.
Not all photographs have the same value within a project. Selection depends not only on whether an image is formally appealing, but also on what it contributes to the narrative.
I group images by their relationships, themes, spaces, shapes, colours, textures or ideas. I compare photographs and look at the dialogues they might create with one another.
Sometimes an apparently secondary image takes on importance when placed next to another. The narrative emerges from the relationship between the photographs.
7. BACK
Post-production begins by respecting what has been recorded.
I work from the RAW file and make the necessary adjustments to brightness, contrast, colour, noise and framing. The aim is not to transform the reality captured in the photograph, but to find a visual interpretation that is consistent with the project.
I work with high-quality files and a workflow that preserves the original information and allows me to revert to an earlier version when necessary.
Colour management and file preparation are also part of the process, especially when photographs are intended for an exhibition, a publication or an art print.
8. SELECTING AND CONNECTING
A photograph does not necessarily end when the image is captured.
The project continues through the selection, editing and sequencing, and ultimately in the way the work is presented.
In a book, images establish a relationship across pages. In an exhibition, the size, distance between photographs, space and light change how they are read. On a screen, the scale and setting are different.
That is why I understand each project as an open process in which research, photography, editing and presentation are all part of the same vision.
Photography is documentation, but it is also interpretation.
It means looking again at what we think we know and finding, within the everyday, a story that still remains.
9. BUILDING THE IMAGE
After researching, observing, returning to the site, and selecting, a moment comes when photography ceases to be merely a record and becomes a form of visual construction.
Here we see an approach that is part of the way I look at things: clarity of form, geometry, balance, frontal composition and a certain reduction of the image. It has a connection with the Bauhaus tradition and with a view of photography in which form can also become content.
Bernd and Hilla Becher are among my fundamental influences. I am deeply interested in their way of looking at architecture and industrial structures: the precision of the framing, the clarity, symmetry, repetition, and the ability to isolate a structure from its context until it becomes an image with its own identity.
Her work has taught me that architecture can cease to be merely a photographed building and become, within the image, an autonomous visual piece.
I don't seek to reproduce that perspective. It has become part of my own way of working through what I've learned.
That is why, when I create an image, I make decisions about viewpoint, distance, camera height, perspective, light, framing and the relationship between the elements. I seek to remove whatever adds nothing and find a visual structure capable of supporting the photograph on its own.
Symmetry can bring order to an image, but a slight deviation can also introduce tension. An empty space can carry as much weight as an object. A line, a shadow or a repetition can reveal a relationship that wasn’t evident at first glance.
In this process, aesthetics are not added to the documentation: they emerge from the way we see what is being documented.
Thus, photography becomes a place where research, memory, and form coexist.
Document what exists, but construct an image that lets us see it differently.
10. FROM SCREEN TO ARTWORK
The photographic archive took different forms: first a collection of images, then a narrative, and finally a physical work.
The selection, editing and sequencing transformed the archive into a project that could be exhibited, explored and shared with others.
The book was one of its first forms of realisation, but not the only one. The exhibitions and presentations allowed the images to once again occupy the building’s space and take on new meanings.
11. A CONTINUING PROCESS
Valores Declarados does not end with the publication of the book.
After eighteen years of work, the archive continues to offer new ways of seeing. Some images take on a different meaning over time; others remain as a record of spaces and ways of working that have since disappeared.
The project remains open to new perspectives, new ways of presenting the archive and new relationships between photography, architecture, memory and transformation.
Because photographing the same place for so many years does not mean you have finished getting to know it. It means learning to see it differently each time you return.
