PHOTOGRAPHY · ART DIRECTION — One method, eight years

A visual grammar, not a style — from the medium-format negative to the printed book · Art direction · 2013–2021 · 3 books · 1 campaign

Client

Personal and commissioned work

Role

Art direction, photography, editing and layout of the three books

Timeline

2013 – 2021

Stack

35 mm, 120 · medium format, Digital, InDesign, Lightroom Book, Campaign art direction

A style is recognised by its finish: a colour, a grain, a filter. What’s here is something else — a way of solving the frame that works the same with a medium-format camera in a dark studio as with a digital one in full sun in a volcanic crater. Isolate a form against a background that stays silent. Let in a single saturated colour. Think in squares. And keep the accident only when it puts the image in order. The subject changes, the continent changes, the camera changes; the operation is always the same.

The problem: A style doesn’t survive a change of subject, medium and country

Eight years of work spread across studio, film, campaign and book risk reading as four different portfolios. The question wasn’t what my style is, but what decision gets made before knowing what is being photographed — because only that withstands a change of context.

How it was approached

1. 01 · A form against a flat field. The most constant decision, and the most invisible: isolate an object and give it a background with no information. Sky, black, a white wall, the sheet of the sea. The background isn’t what was behind — it’s what was chosen so that there would be nothing behind. When the work reaches paper, the flat field stops being the sky and becomes the page margin itself: in Geometrías the image never bleeds, it floats inside the white, which does exactly the job the sky did.
2. 02 · A single saturated accent. There are never two colours fighting. There is a desaturated field — grey, beige, black, the fog — and exactly one red thing inside it. Red always comes in alone, and it is always what organises the frame: it fixes where the eye starts and forces everything else to give up saturation. The size doesn’t matter: a hood that fills half the image or a two-centimetre embroidery work for the same reason.
3. 03 · The square as a unit of thought. The square starts out as an imposition of the medium-format negative, but it doesn’t stay there: it survives scanning, layout and reaches the printer. Two of the three books are square — 21 × 21 and 17.5 × 17.5 — without any camera forcing it. The square forces composition by weight rather than direction: there is no long side to push the eye, so the subject has to hold itself up.
4. 04 · Control and accident, on the same table. On one side, the studio: flash, black background, objects frozen in mid-air. On the other, film: fogging, double exposures, light leaks. What’s interesting isn’t that they coexist, but the criterion for keeping the accident — the error is kept when it reinforces rules 01 and 02; if it gets in their way, the frame is discarded. The double exposure wasn’t planned: it stays because the overlap erases the background and leaves the figures floating, that is, because the accident made rule 01 on its own.
5. The system on paper — three books, three incompatible pages. The books are where the method is really put to the test, because a sequence forgives nothing. Geometrías: pure form, the image contained within a wide margin. USA: territory and road, the image bleeds and alternates a full-bleed page with a floating one so the reading has a pulse. Sillas: pairs butting against each other, no margin and no folio. It isn’t a template applied three times — it’s the same criterion producing three different answers because the subject is different. The format follows the subject.

from frame to page: Decide what stays out → A silent background → One saturated accent → Square frame → Shot · control or accident → Discard criterion → Sequence → Page edge according to subject

Solution: Four operations applied before the subject

The background isn’t what was behind: it’s what was chosen so there would be nothing behind. There are never two colours fighting — there is a desaturated field and exactly one red thing inside it. The square survives scanning, layout and printing. And the accident is kept only when it reinforces the first two rules; if it gets in their way, the frame is discarded.

Product decisions

• my role: Art direction, photography, editing and layout of the three books
• the four rules: 01 A form against a flat field
  02 A single saturated accent
  03 The square as a unit of thought
  04 Control and accident on the same table
• application: Tenerife, April 2019 — two days in the Teide crater. The location is chosen for the background, the clothes for the colour, and the shot is decided before the model sits down.
• the system on paper: Geometrías (21 × 21, an image that never bleeds), USA (24.4 × 21, full bleed alternating with floating) and Sillas (17.5 × 17.5, pairs butting together with no margin or folio).

Results

Eight years of work that hold together as one body rather than four separate portfolios, with three books laid out and a campaign produced from start to finish. The result isn’t a style recognisable by its finish, but a grammar that withstands the change of subject, medium and country — and that includes knowing when to suspend itself: in Sillas the first rule is deliberately switched off, because the background is what names the absent.

• 8 years — 2013–2021 · 35 mm, 120 and digital
• 3 books — three incompatible page solutions, and all three correct
• 4 rules — applied before knowing what is being photographed

"Sillas isn’t about chairs: it’s about absence. There rule 01 is suspended, and it is suspended for a reason that can be stated — the background can’t be flattened because the background is what names the absent."

What was learned

1. The format follows the subject. A closed form asks for a closed frame; a territory without edges asks for a page without edges; an absence asks for the images to touch. The rule isn’t use margins or use bleed — it’s that the edge of the page says the same as the image.
2. Almost all the work is in subtraction. The background pushed aside, the colour that doesn’t come in, the long side that gets cropped. Deciding before shooting what stays out of the frame.
3. A grammar is useful when you also know how to break it and say why. Knowing when not to isolate is the same decision as isolating, made the other way round.

If you have a project where someone has to decide how something looks — and sustain that decision across a campaign, a website or a printed object.