Santiago de Chile
Juan Pablo Koljatic
Camera: PENTAX K-100
Film: Ilford HP5
I usually take photos in cities, I wouldn’t say that they are the central theme. And since photography is not my profession, it was interesting to work on a specific topic suggested by someone else, given that I had always chosen what to photograph and how.
A city is approached from a more prosaic theme, but no less attractive for that. There is no monumentality or recognizable elements (public building, square, statue, etc.), but corners, front gardens or utilitarian furniture, which have a more anonymous nuance. It is not my goal to identify the place, neighborhood or environment, but the generic landscape. However, I think that the personality of the city is as present in simple places as in the grandiloquent and emblematic ones.
The photos are at night, with the lighting available (suboptimal, almost always, but which offers a generally solvable problem). They set off with hikes in places that I am familiar with, but that one would not normally pay attention to. Looking carefully and being in the places, rather than passing through them, I would say that it is the center of the project.
This work had some challenges also on the technical side. I took the photos without a tripod or light meter, pushing the HP5 out of the manufacturer’s suggested treatment. Therefore, there is an additional random component to intuition since the final result is not completely controlled. Finally, when making paper copies, the negative is just a new starting point.
Choko Latin
Camera: Nikon F5
The exercise of observation in everyday life when leaving home is similar to drinking water when the job is around the noise of the city and the lost spaces. To look at the people they pass by, to look at each other in detail, to play inwards and outwards in the constant of reaffirming ourselves collectively, as the warmth of a discourse that dusts and fissures but does not lose its brightness in the eyes of those who understand themselves in the plural. Thanks to the periphery for the interactive mornings at the fair, to the Vega Central of Santiago for the food and to CAPTION Magazine for the invitation.
