On Social Criticism: ‘exoticism always sells, the personal context - not so much’
The exploration of the codes of visual narration, the constructs of documentary photography, the relation of the human to the place are the main topics in Gómez Selva’s work.
In Tora, Tora, Tora! Gómez proposes ongoing research on the significance of space through prisms of social, economic, cultural background in connection to the person and identity. In Los Perros, the concepts of sexuality, violence, and love are rediscovered through the juxtaposition of the subjects’ experiences with Gómez's personal understanding. Through constant questioning and drive to reach an intrinsic meaning reality is explored, and the core of documentary photography is analyzed.
Gómez Selva is a photographer and artist who lives and creates between Madrid and Bilbao, originally coming from Murcia. In 2018, he post-graduated in Author Photography from the CFC (Center of Contemporary Photography) in Bilbao. Gómez won numerous awards, his recent one in 2020 is the Ertibil Bizkaia, Visual Arts traveling exhibit. He takes an active part exhibiting his work in galleries in Bilbao, Madrid, Barcelona for the past six years.
We embark on an in-depth conversation with Gómez to discuss his journey from the decision to choose photography over studying economics with encouragement by his family to the way pandemic affects the creative scene. We speak about documentary photography and the research of constructs of places, violence, the future while pondering on the topic of social criticisms through the lens of the possibility for change.
‘I am going to insist on the fact that, despite belonging to apparently twined worlds, photographers and visual artists coexist in very different spheres within the art ecosystem and its market.’
I Am
Hi Gómez, let’s start the conversation from your choice to study towards a Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts at the University of Murcia, followed by a Master's degree in Author Photography in the CFC Center in Bilbao. What was the main drive to make this decision?
A lot of times, I think that I am not the author of some of my own decisions, including my studies and training. It feels as if they were made by a different person, compared to the one I am today. I was too young to know what I was doing. I have several artist family members, and the logical thing would have been to want to do something related to that subject since I was little. Although I have always painted, drawn, and received creative stimuli, what I wanted to study when I was in a high school was economics or some kind of business science.
When I entered the last years of high school my father insisted that I study what he thought would make me happiest, not what would give me more money or professional success. After long reflections, I understood that I didn't care for economics, hahaha. I felt that it was going to give me a stable future, but having to decide at the age of fifteen what you are going to dedicate (supposedly) the rest of your life to seems like a real mess to me. So I decided to train in Fine Arts and let my true passion find me. And indeed, although I have been trained in many disciplines and worked with different media, it has been photography, or rather images, that have caught me during all these years, which is what I have managed to turn into my work and my obsession.
How do those degrees complete or add to one another?
The training in the Master's Degree in Author Photography helped me to bring visual art codes and contemporary art closer to a much more hermetic and conservative world such as documentary photography. This topic is broad enough to write a book on, well, in fact, there are, and many, hahaha. But I think that this is not the time or the format to open a debate on the role of photography in art, the concept of the image, its consumption, and a long list of things that we could question. I am going to insist on the fact that, despite belonging to apparently twined worlds, photographers and visual artists coexist in very different spheres within the art ecosystem and its market. There will always be a kind of rivalry between purists and contemporary artists whose discourse is taken beyond the photographic act, or at least that is what I perceive from my experience. I recommend the book C PHOTO 10. Don´t Call Me A Photographer edited by Ivorypress, which shows a very interesting reflection along with works of contemporary authors who reject the term Photographer and exploit the limits of the photographic medium.
‘I have never felt very identified with my place of origin or with the concerns of my friends and family, and I have always felt the growing need to approach different spaces and groups in search of new contexts.’
Documentary Photography
Researching places and people are the main topics you focus on, which you explore both as unrelated themes and also as intertwined narrations with a strong influence of one on another. What are some of the insights you gained from this research?
My decision to research and develop projects around interpersonal relationships, the spaces we inhabit, and our relationship with them are born from a vital need, of a kind of personal ambiguity that over the years has led me down different paths. Let's say that I have never felt very identified with my place of origin or with the concerns of my friends and family, and I have always felt the growing need to approach different spaces and groups in search of new contexts. In 2015, I made the decision to move to Bilbao, north of Spain, so my context changed completely as well as my way of photographing and understanding the photographic medium itself, my references, the materials I work with, even many features of my own identity.
What are some of the experiments you undertook?
This significant change led me to want to delve deeper into different universal concepts and ideas such as sexuality, the future, violence, or the home, among others and to talk about them through documentary photography and written essays. These concerns made me develop projects such as Moisés (2015), ORO (2016), and Sativa (2016), in which I was able to investigate intimacy, private space, and identity, not only through the photographic medium but also assuming an active role within the spaces and contexts, which I have been part of.
What did you discover that affected you on a personal level or as a creator?
I think the most interesting reflection that I have gotten from these projects has been my ability (and that of photography) to lie and to disguise reality with anything you want. In my works, I show real people, real spaces, and true experiences, but their form, order, and staging are conditioned by individual perception and contexts, and that makes it a lie. Besides, this lie is something that even I have ended up believing. There are times when I don't remember certain stories and anecdotes very well because I confuse them with each other. I reinvent them every time I tell them, or I accompany them with different images to generate new synergies. Much of my photographic work, if not most, comes from experiences so personal and sincere that I live constantly revisiting my past and my relationships. I have had to learn to live with it, commodifying my own personal and imaginary.
‘I don't know, I think that living this global pause made me 'hold my horses' a bit, made me slow down, look at other things and remind myself that there is life beyond work, work, work.’
Tora, Tora, Tora!
Tora, Tora, Tora! is an ongoing series since 2018 in which you research the symbolism of physical places and the way the meaning can be changed based on social, political, and cultural phenomena. What does estrangement from the object mean to you?
Indeed, this madness is affecting not only this project, but also my vital concerns, my way of being, everything. I could say that I am moving away from some codes on which I based the first images of this project. I am increasingly feeling the need to approach the written essay to address certain topics, and use image as a kind of 'totem', work each photograph with more time and make Tora, Tora, Tora! a kind of amalgamation of contexts and identities, but dedicating more time to each of them.
How do you think this series will develop further, especially under the current circumstances of social distancing and other restrictions?
I don't know, I think that living this global pause made me 'hold my horses' a bit, made me slow down, look at other things and remind myself that there is life beyond work, work, work. In addition, I had just moved to Madrid when the lockdown began, but I continue working in Bilbao. My family is from Murcia, so I feel trapped between 3 different contexts, with loved ones in all of them, and living a kind of alienation from my "safe spaces." I feel like a stranger in all of them, a visitor.
HEMEN
Tell about your work at HEMEN as a person responsible for the visual side and photography.
Now comes the advertising space, hahaha. I am very happy to be part of such a project since it is a conjunction of many fronts and values that allow me to approach product and editorial photography and, in general, all my creative work at brand levels from a free and personal dimension. We like to talk about HEMEN as a proposal that fosters the revolution in making through traditional techniques, such as ceramics and sewing, giving visibility to manual making, while experimenting with new forms, languages, and media, reinforcing local production, and making the project a creative laboratory in constant change and growth.
As a photographer of the brand, I like to approach each new season or stage of the project in an experimental way. Working by testing new materials, lighting, and people around us, to show a product, trying that, attempts to avoid the regulations and deception that dominate in the fashion industry. Although all my work as a contemporary documentary filmmaker is based on prioritising human interrelationships and recording experiences from a real distance and diverting interest in technical virtuosity, my work at HEMEN seeks to show the brand's objects and products from technical experimentation and from an identity that is increasingly based on the way I use light, and not so much on my way of photographing.
Exhibition & Awards
You have an impressive list of achievements, winning numerous awards with the recent one in 2020, ERTIBIL BIZKAIA, and the exhibition at the same place, Sala Rekalde, Bilbao. What was an award or exhibition you’re most proud of as your main milestone?
The ERTIBIL award is something that I hold in quite high esteem because the two years that I have been part of the call I have coincided with many artist friends, and to have an exhibition in a room of such dimensions and sharing that with people from the same context is incredible. I also like to talk about the first exhibition and presentation of my book No Mires al Sol, which I was able to do in HEMEN’s space in Bilbao when I was not yet part of the team, and I remember it as a very intimate and familiar presentation. I think it is also necessary to share our work in spaces of other creators and alternatives to the artistic circuit, which is also the most affected by the pandemic.
How does the pandemic impact this year’s plans?
Many local calls and small spaces have had to cease their activity or even disappear altogether. That said, despite the situation we are living in, I have been able to do many interesting things this year, and I have discovered many incredible artists. So, I am happy to know that we continue to resist and that culture claims its space.
‘I have many things to say about the true scope or meaning of making real criticism through art, or to what extent we should simply be honest with ourselves, and be clear that many times in our work, we benefit from the topics that we intend to criticise.’
Social Criticism
Another topic that is prominent in your work is social criticism, which comes through images as English Lunch, HEARDHEADED, empty room from Los Perros, etc. and takes a stance on pre-defined conceptions. How do you think art and photography can shift views, perceptions, and stereotypes?
This issue of whether art can change something or not, how it changes it, and which codes are more valid than others, seems very interesting to me, but I think it is a dead end. The important thing about art, and perhaps even more so about photography, is that it disguises the artist's critical thinking as culture, which is often really transcendent but, I don't know to what extent.
Actions and works that come to question something often use the object of criticism to criticise itself, make use of the discourse that they are trying to distort, or suddenly commercialise an armed conflict with the excuse of raising awareness of the problem.
How can your work and research influence this?
I am saying many things, but I have many things to say about the true scope or meaning of making real criticism through art, or to what extent we should simply be honest with ourselves, and be clear that many times in our work, we benefit from the topics that we intend to criticise. Exoticism always sells, the personal context - not so much, and even less so, if it is not explicit. I better leave the topic here, because I'm shooting off everywhere like a monkey with a machine gun, hahaha.
Upcoming Projects
What are your plans for this year?
I’m in a thousand things really, happy to have so many active projects and juggling to manage so many things with the current situation of global madness. Short term, I want to finish my personal photo projects to try to exhibit them throughout 2021 and present new projects to calls that I have pending. I want to invest more time in HEMEN and grow the brand, and experiment more with the fashion and product formats. I know the brand has a lot of potential to become something great.
What are you working on right now?
Currently, I am working mainly on DouleurDolor, a sound project that is giving great news in its short life and in which we also experiment with musical and visual styles, etc. I could also mention the book that I am writing and that there will soon be some kind of a trailer, collaborations, etc. But well, people that know me, know that this is nothing new, that I have no life outside of work. And the truth is I don't want this to ever stop because in each new project, commercial work, commission, or whatever, I work with incredible colleagues or I discover new creators, and that is the fuel that encourages me to carry on.
