Project Detail: NO SHAME

Contest:

LuganoPhotoDays 2018



Brand:

LuganoPhotoDays



Author:

Concha de la Rosa

Status:
Selected

 

Project Info

NO SHAME

Project description

NO SHAME

This project is about the observation of beauty in old age. It has a double objective, to observe beauty over the years, a subject that I find of special interest since it describes the values of our current society and beauty in photography.

In our western society, aging is a sign of weakness, lack of beauty, we move between ads that continually encourage us to be young eternally. AGING IS A SHAME.

The elders of the East have a very different position in society than in Western cultures. Older people become the pillar of society, a figure respected and admired by all members.

It is one of the qualities of the current human being, not acting, not facing, the denial of the obvious. We try to run away from what almost everyone will be, older people.

In this project I intend to show elders in photographs with a very careful aesthetics, and through the beauty of light and the color of the photograph itself make the viewer travel through each wrinkle of my characters, enjoying its warmth and feeling the beauty of old age without shame.

This project, as indicated at the beginning, has a double objective: to show beauty in old age and in photography itself. Currently, in contemporary photography, photographers who make urban photography sometimes with the sole purpose of showing beautiful scenes seem embarrassed. It seems that we do not count projects. Describing the current society through beauty is pure transgression.

Saul Leiter, one of my most admired photographers, tells in a documentary about his life "if when I was young I would not have been ashamed to tell stories through beauty, I would have been more successful".

NO SHAME, is a cry to society to care for our elderly and see through the years something natural that should be enjoyed without shame and a claim to beauty as an artistic way of telling.

Technique

In this project I have an intimate and close observation without attacking the moment that is found in the public spaces of large cities where a person finds his tranquility in a scene not isolated from the crowd, but where there is a small space free of contamination. All photographs are instants NOT POSED, including close-ups. No photograph presented or agreed. I have asked for authorization after taking the photographs at the necessary times.

They are made with a fixed focal length of 40 mm, so I am very close to the characters. This way of working makes me feel closer to the sensations that the characters transmit to me. I have made a selection of my favorites although this series contains more photographs since the beginning in 2017 and I continue working in parallel to other projects.

Photos