At once constructing and appealing to a common understanding of space, photography has a long-standing role in documentary practice. Theories abound regarding the fabrication of truth and the position of the artist in relation to the image-as-document such as in street photography —a genre alluded to by the works presented in Encounters. Yet in such photographs spaces are generally depicted as static, their animation is seldom considered.

Josema Zamorano’s work highlights fluctuations in the appearance of space and responds to how we come to know place as lived experience. The gestural layering and repeated folding back onto itself of place, as recorded in these images, results from the artist’s photographic approach, which he calls “spatial sculpting.” Using the photographic apparatus as a sensorial extension of his body, the artist moves about the spaces he encounters, scanning the scene back and forth in an ongoing negotiation of the street as a living and ever shifting locale. This form of inquiry mirrors the perceptual act itself, tracing the saccades of the eye as it consumes visual inputs. Through a methodology rooted in existential phenomenology, Zamorano looks at the ephemeral space between the world and ourselves. Here, the task is not depicting reality but rather investigating and documenting the fleeting experience of seeing of what constructs our world.

In this solo exhibition, which includes prints, installation, and interactive sculptural objects, Zamorano presents renderings of his encounters with space in the streets of Berlin.

Encounters
Capture Photography Festival 2019

Curated by Annie Briard. Mónica Reyes Gallery, Vancouver March 29–April 14

Evanescent Space Berlin #17, Float mounted pigment print on watercolor cotton rag. Framed 20x41in (51x104.5cm)