- .:. mgpixlab :: photography by miguel gómez

Photographer | Visual Artist.

March 29, 1974 Bogotá - Colombia.

Based in New York City - U.S.A.
(+1) 646-431-8999.

Working on:
Professional Formats:
Film: 35 mm | Medium Format (6x4.5, 6x6, 6x7) | Large Format (4x5 /10x12)
Plus: Digital Pro Format.

Love Is Light - .:. © miguel gómez / mgpixlab
1991-2011.

As a professional photographer and visual artist, I work producing images that aim to obtain a sincere reflection on the aspects of our modern-day culture.

Through the seize of a display of objects, the array of urban landscapes or the unpredictability of the human form -and in my research- I explore phenomenology on both neutral or conditioned backgrounds.

I intend to generate an understanding on how the significance of what we see affects affects others, and how it creates a lasting impression in our memory.

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My work in photography is a project inspired by the early 20th century prediction of László Moholy-Nagy, who seemed to be very aware of an evolution in communication via Photography. He boldly predicted that the illiterate man of the future would not be the one unable to read and write, but the one who would be unable to either take a photograph, read it or interpret it.

In this context, I deliberately gather elements from urban and daily-life contexts and try to read them both through portraiture and location work. These elements generally go unobserved by the common eye, as they are part of the permanent environment we live in. We see them every day, walk on by and yet we rarely notice them, or take time to consider the value in their uniqueness. People or places that are absolutely beautiful or interesting even if they would not seem so at first glance.

The elements I use to construct my visual language may very well be the vowels of an alphabet. In photography terms, they might be shapes, forms, planes, rhythms and colors. I have noticed that some of those elements are largely ignored in other visual works or they remain muted. Just as in spoken language, in a visual language vowels give deeper sound to consonants... The juxtaposition of the visual elements conforms this language. True expression in spoken sound comes with vowels and there are only 5 of them for 20-something other letters. In my photography work I try to look for vowels. Does it make sense? I leave the question open. I am satisfied with an image because I have found something that "talks" to me. There is a resonance there that makes me want to capture it.

In my portraiture work, I try to approach the human form in the same deliberate manner/fashion and most of the time there is no make-up present or retouching of any kind. A neutral background is usually my preferred method of facing a "sitting". In my opinion, human qualities are enhanced this way.

In the first part of the process (the capture process), I bring symbolic elements of the image together. They are the core ingredients of a particular language and create a connecting quality in the images. They constitute the foundation of an aesthetic-based system of communication -which I wish to unveil.

Many factors make these elements symbolic. Cultural, religious, contemporary, urban, popular, fashionable and other adjectives may make these symbolic relationships apparent. The most common aspects of urban and daily life are seen by me through an unorthodox viewpoint. I intend to add some relevance to them by using visual composition, and later on, the addition or subtraction of contrast, just to name the most basic of photographic techniques. In order to find the connections between the symbols I catch I need to bring the "vowels and consonants" together, to create images.

The way I approach this method of capture, -and eventually representation, is rather spontaneous. As most of the first part of the work is done on location, it can be quite challenging to not have an absolute certainty about the elements that will be discovered.

This approach is apparently effective for me, because most of the time I discover relationships that connect the many images I shot that were initially unrelated. In the the image processing stage the result may very well related to the construction of a "Mental Map".

The interest in creating relationships between images, helps me to discover interesting aesthetic relationships between them. I want to put a new language to the test, a language which will be helpful in understanding the mental maps that the images create when put together.

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