Minimalism & Colors in Lanzarote and Santorini
The photographs from this collection were taken in Lanzarote and Santorini. Two small volcanic islands thrown into the sea at the western and eastern limits of the continent, which have the fortuitous coincidence of sharing exciting landscapes and breathtaking sunsets. These natural qualities, along with the beaches, attract droves of tourists every year.
As a photographer, I offered myself the luxury of ignoring tourist attractions and focusing my attention on architectural aspects and urban settings. The Cycladic and Canary architectures (better: Lanzarotene) are in fact a beautiful test bench for those who conceive their photographs as a white page where lines, shapes and discrete hints of color relate with each other, and with the page itself.In these images, the figurative component is obviously always present since they derive from the concrete world, but reduced to the essential -sometimes almost bared to the bone that even a superficial observer may overlook the nexus between these common and recognizable objects, (a door, a vase, a road sign) and the photographic treatment that extracts/abstracts them from reality.
They are not really photographs of architectures, not even of landscapes. In the world of Internet, maniacally predisposed to cataloguing, they would be declared "Uncategorized".
I define them as figurative abstractions.
From a practical point of view, you need a medium telephoto lens that from a frontal viewpoint can flatten the perspective, but not too much; Then, you need the patience to wait for the right light (rarely coincidental with the golden hour) that outlines the game of shadows and defines the touch of color.
More generally, you need a strong propensity for observation; the ability to view architectural forms and their shadows as geometrical elements, that is, in abstract terms; and finally, a mental predisposition based on curiosity, similar to that of an explorer or the games of a child.
