Schlagwort-Archive: Barcelona

#FacesOfPhotography – Teil 85: Jordi Busque aus Barcelona

Jordi Busque ist Astrophysiker und Fotojournalist. „Gestrandet“ in seiner Heimatstadt wartet er darauf, seine Freundin irgendwann nach Monaten wieder sehen zu können. Und er wünscht sich, wieder zu reisen… Aber die Zeit des strengen spanischen Lockdowns hat er gut genutzt. Das und einiges mehr hat er den #FacesOfPhotography erzählt:

How have you and your photography been doing in the last weeks and months?
Luckily nobody in my family has got Covid-19 but still the lock-down has been a challenge. Me and my girlfriend have been „trapped“ in different countries and have no idea when we will be able to see each other in person. I usually spend most of my time in Latin America working on different stories but the lock-down caught me visiting my family in Catalonia, so I have been unable to return to work the usual way. Here the lock-down has been very strict (for several months it was forbidden to be outside home except to go buy food). I really enjoy being outside in nature, doing long term hiking and camping, so it has been a challenge to be indoors for so long. Still, thanks to the Internet, I’ve been able to keep active. I’ve been spending this time doing research for future stories, writing for future articles and book projects, and pitching stories about science (I’m an astrophysicist) using photographs that I had already taken. I have also started to learn Arabic, which has been in the back of my head for some time. Doing stories in South America has shown me how better positioned I am to go deep in comparison to, say, an American photographer who would only speak English. So I am trying to add new languages to improve my ability as a photojournalist. And in order to satisfy my need for nature and as a way of doing something to keep my mood positive in the midst of so much bad news, I started sprouting tomato seeds and now I have planted them in my mom’s house garden.

How much is the photographic industry in Spain generally affected by the crisis?
I think it is quite bad, but it was so before the crisis anyway. The thing that has gotten really worse is for photography related to promoting the country as a tourist destination, for obvious reasons. I’ve also heard of photojournalists being rejected to work in public hospitals because they didn’t want the horrible images happening there to go public. Also this obsession the media have of going mono-thematic have not helped. It seems the only stories worth publishing now are about the virus.

What do you think, how does the future of the industry look like?
I’m not very optimistic. There are a lot of talented photographers and this is really good, but the opportunities to sell our stories have been shrinking for many years. And it’s difficult to imagine that the coming general economic crisis will increase those. The only thing we can do is to give our best and try to be imaginative to create new opportunities.

And that of photography in general?
The future of photography looks quite good. I think there are a lot of talented photographers and no shortage of stories to be told. Technology has also improved a lot so even with inexpensive cameras you can take technically good images. A problem that I’ve been seeing for a long time is a tendency for many photographers to converge in style. So I think the landscape of possibilities is still mostly unexplored, so photographers who like exploring in that sense they have a bright future I believe.

What do you wish for your photographic future?
I wish that soon we can travel again safely. Personally a big part of the joy of my job is to travel and know all these different worlds, and then use photography and text to explain them. It also would be good for publications to become more wide and diverse in their subject matters, and also be more about who publishes the story better rather than who publishes the story first.

Website von Jordi Busque
Facebook-Profil von Jordi Busque
Instagram-Feed von Jordi Busque
Twitter-Kanal von Jordi Busque
LinkedIn-Profil von Jordi Busque

Natürlich können Sie auch gerne über Fotogloria Kontakt zu Jordi aufnehmen – melden Sie sich jederzeit unter 040 609 42 906 -0 oder info@fotogloria.de

#FacesOfPhotography – Teil 41: José Colón aus Barcelona

@covidphotodiaries – so heißt das spanische Fotografenkollektiv, das seit 50 Tagen das Leben mit der Pandemie dokumentiert. Einer von ihnen ist José Colón, den #FacesOfPhotography erzählt er sehr offen, wie es ihm geht und welchen Blick er auf die aktuelle Lage hat:

What do we see in your photo?
It is a Self-portrait with ICS (Catalan Institute of Health) Barcelona primary care nurses after taking the temperature of a Covid-19 sick patient staying at the Melià Hotel in Barcelona.
Patients with Covid-19 discharged from hospital have been transferred to different hotels in Barcelona, including the Hotel Melià, to spend two weeks in confinement, before being able to return home. Once they arrive, sanitary and hotel personnel welcome and take a temperature before assigning them a room.

Spain has hard initial restrictions – how does your work work in practice?
True, Spain has had very severe restrictions from the beginning. The Spanish Government met with the Extraordinary Council of Ministers chaired by the President, Pedro Sánchez, and agreed to declare a state of emergency throughout the national territory, initially for a period of fifteen days, to address the health emergency caused by the COVID-19 coronavirus in Spain. 50 days have passed since yesterday, my feeling is the same, since the beginning of the coverage of the crisis, they are not giving us necessary and correct access to cover this historical situation. From the same government, public or private institutions, the slogan is the same. Limiting access to journalists and photojournalists is not a democratic system. In our daily practice, since the beginning of the crisis, we have had two fundamental priorities. The first would be security for the people we work with and two security for the people we live with. Access management, as he commented, is impossible. We have to move many contacts in order to be able to get access, whether to people or to institutions, today there are still some that were not achieved, as in my case access to hospitals! On the other hand , it is very difficult to achieve.

How do you manage to work and taking photos in this harsh reality?
The way to approach this reality is being very complicated, we are working at home, with people we know, who are, where and how they live, because it is our own society. In my case, I feel more calm, as my work is almost always done in Spain. I consider myself a local photographer. And if we talk about the emotional part, ufff. would be to go that I think go, to the psychologist! Is being very hard!

Is it already clear what the crisis means for photography industry?
It is clear that beyond the human tragedy, the coronavirus epidemic, or COVID-19, is having an impact on the economy, especially in the tourist habitat, but also in the photographic industry. A sector that, as part of the electronics industry, is dominated by Japanese companies and whose products are mostly manufactured on Asian soil. Examples such as the cancellation of the CP+ 2020, Japan’s leading fair for precautionary photography in the face of the epidemic. A similar measure tomoThe Photography Show or the American Nabshow, which have been cancelled or postponed. This is a global crisis. All this is just the industry, imagine the workers of this industry, there are few who are working, everything is stopped, in all fields and this is just a „snack“ of what is going to come because, right now, with the disease already widespread in much of the world (including Spain) we began to understand other consequences that directly affect the photography market. We are no longer talking about the unstoppable fall of the stock markets, but above all about the difficulties of working in the future.

Do you think that ways of seeing and visual languages will change against the crisis background?
I think, if everything will change we will see brutal creations. Crises sharpen ingenuity, creativity, art, culture, writing. I think in all disciplines we will see unique creations.

What is your personal photographic wish for the time after the crisis?
I hope that everyone, even if it is a little more, will become aware of others, that we will understand that if we do not have the collective union, either in the photograph or in the life that surrounds us. We won’t get anywhere. And let us be clear that, „this is just the beginning, our future,“ unfortunately, is what we have just lived, and we are living!

Website von José Colón
Instagram-Feed von José Colón
Instagram-Feed von den covidphotodiaries
Facebook-Profil von José Colón

Natürlich können Sie auch gerne über Fotogloria Kontakt zu José aufnehmen – melden Sie sich jederzeit unter 040 609 42 906 -0 oder info@fotogloria.de

Mike Gamio und seine »First Love«

Fußball ist Mikes große Liebe (zumindest eine davon), insofern ist der Titel »First Love« etwas irre führend… Passt aber zum Bild. Und natürlich zur wöchentliche Doppelseite über kleine Fußballspieler, die immer großartige Fotos zeigt. In dieser Woche das phantastische Bild, das fotogloria-Mitgründer Mike Gamio über den Dächern von Barcelona fotografiert hat. Eben weil der Fußball seine große Liebe ist.