Individuation: A Portrait

This is the long(er) riff on the Individuation project. If you want to jump to the shorter version on what you’ll read here visit individuation.art

Seth Godin said it best in his book Linchpin: Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient.

I cannot think of a better way to describe this new series of portraits which are not limited edition art pieces but are commissioned portraits, meaning anyone can hire me to do this for them or their family. They can also be gifted for someone special during a time of transition (all of this will make sense in a minute).

They are a poetic act that symbolize a rite of passage, marking the crossing of the threshold from one period of our life to a new one.

Carl Jung called it individuation: when we assert ourselves as individuals separating from the collective thought to find our unique self.

American psychoanalyst Erik Erikson called individuation the lifelong process of navigating the dialectic between disconnection and connection, beginning with the disconnection from our parents to connect to our true indentity, which allows to reconnect to them again from a different, more mature, place.

In these portraits I place the sitter in front of a minimalist white background and take the portrait using medium format black and white film. The style is reminiscent of Richard Alvedon’s The American West portrait series. The sitter is holding her parent's hands though you cannot see the parents, only their hands. This is, after all, conceptual art, not a literal family portrait.

The sitter asserts herself as an individual and isolating her with the white background is a visual metaphor of her separation from the collective thought. At the same time, by holding her parents hands she is recognizing she is the culmination of her mother and father’s long line of spiritual and genetic bloodlines. However she is more than just that, she is a unique expression of the universe.

This art piece has become a rite of passage for children coming of age. In fact, we have created ceremonies that include core elements of rites of passage from around the world that mark the crossing of the threshold between one stage of life and another.

The portrait has significant emotional value the moment it is done. Now think of the value it will have when her parents are no longer alive and the art piece becomes a reminder that with all their humanity, her parents were always by her side.

Surprisingly, I’ve had a few people in their forties who have asked me to do this portrait with them and their aging parents as they want to have it done before they get sick or pass away.

I committed to work with 20 families this year for this portraits and so far about half of those have been done or spoken for. I will happily work with you or someone you know if there is still availability.

The Venice floods as a climate change visual story?

It didn't take long after reading that Venice was experiencing a historic flood to decide I had to go. After all, it was a natural continuation from the images I took of glacier meltwater a few months prior.

That's how I found myself on an airplane en route to Venice on November 14th. During the flight, I kept going over the dramatic images on the news. I was so impressed that I ran to El Corte Inglés during the short layover in Madrid to buy higher waterproof boots.

Source: NPR.org

As I was traveling on the vaporetto linea 2 on my way to Rialto, I readied myself with my brand new knee-high fishing boots. It was dark and rainy so the flooded city was not evident from within the boat. I did notice though that all the other passengers were wearing regular shoes. Where they not informed of what had happened?

Imagine my surprise when I exited the boat and saw the streets had about as much water as you'd get from a drizzle. Confused, I walked to the Airbnb, high boots and all.

Later that evening I learned from my hostess that the images in the news did happen a few hours back. And they would very likely happen again during the next few days. Only that the dramatic scenes of Venice underwater last for about three to five hours. She reminded me this is not a flood per se, but a high tide. And tides, as everybody knows, go in and out twice a day in most parts of the world.

The high tide came in at midday and at midnight most days I was there and the scenes were as unique as they were spectacular. 

I had the fortune (or misfortune) to experience the worst week in Venice high-tide history. And luckily had a chance to document the acqua alta at daylight and during the middle of the night.

The acqua alta happens when high spring tides coincide with meteorological storm surges. According to Reuters, Saint Mark's Basilica has flooded only six times in 1200 years. Four of these having occurred in past 20 years.

As in Iceland, my aim here was to create visual art pieces that tell the story of climate change in an aesthetic way. If you care to see some of the images I produced during the Venice trip follow the link here. Remember, I don't do photojournalism. I have the highest respect for that discipline and I am not trained in that visual language. I create art that people enjoy having in their homes or places of business. 

Three highlights are worth mentioning from this assignment.

First, the resilience that Venetians, and human beings in general, have. I saw the water more than one meter above ground going into shops, restaurants and minimarts. After the tide receded mops came out and less than an hour later Venice was like nothing had happened. Very impressive.

Second, natural disasters are becoming an attraction. A large number of people waited around Piazza San Marco as it was off limits due to the very high water level. Carabinieri didn't allow access until the water receded some. One can speculate it was for safety concerns.

That is when hundreds of people flooded (no pun intended) the plaza for selfies. The place became an attraction. I saw videos being shot with models and sophisticated camera gear. At some point a large inflatable in the shape of a paper boat was launched.

My favorite moment was seeing a couple slow dance at 3 am in the flooded plaza while music played on their phone. It was a very romantic moment as they where the only two people there besides me at that time (sorry guys). I asked to record them and send them the video so they could have a way to relive such a magical moment.

Three, the Venice Biennale lives up to its hype. It happened that the same week I was there was the last week of the Venice Biennale. I was very fortunate to attend and experience some of the most amazing art in the world. The 2019 art fair's name was May You Live In Interesting Times. Given the historical week, I cannot think of a more appropriate title.

Can the water from an Icelandic melting glacier be turned into an art piece?

I was 12 years old the first time I visited the National Geographic Museum in Washington DC. Right before leaving I made a quick dash to the front desk to ask for the phone number where I could apply to work as a photographer for the magazine. You know, for when I grew up.

I can only assume the receptionists found it endearing and gave me a phone number on a post-it note which I carried in my trusty, velcro-secured wallet until it disintegrated. Seriously, who at that age did not fantasize in embarking on exotic adventures around the world taking photographs and sharing their vision with the world?

Turns out I did not fulfill my childhood dream of working for National Geographic. I ended up studying environmental engineering in Australia, which at least is an adventurous and exotic place. After graduating I got involved in different business ventures until I finally crafted my own version of the dream job: make a living creating visual art pieces around the world.

This backstory is to give you context on why I was so excited to join an expedition last June to take high quality aerial photographs of Icelandic river delta’s formed by glacier meltwater.

The logistics were simple: stay in the south for a week and wait for the weather to be safe enough to fly on a helicopter along the coast and up the glaciers. The execution was not so simple as Icelandic weather can be very dynamic. We monitored it daily and there was a considerable chance we would not be able to fly at all.

The days we didn’t fly we drove for hours through unpaved roads and river crossings looking for landscapes to photograph. No luck. There were days when we didn't shot a single image as the light was not right.

I could feel the tension building as the possibility of flying was diminishing with every passing day. The forecast was not in our favor; as the week progressed the weather was getting worse. After several conversations with the helicopter company it came down to either flying and see how far we could go or not flying at all. And so we flew.

We kept the flight plan flexible and modified it as the weather changed. For over eight hours we made our way through the most diverse and picturesque landscapes I have ever seen. It was time to get to work.

In case you you like to know this kind of thing I had a Sony A7RIII camera and a PhaseOne IQ3 medium format camera with me. The latter being the one I used for most of my shots. 

For those who are not into cameras, PhaseOne is a Danish camera company that sells a handful of cameras a year compared to Nikon and Canon. Albeit they make some of the highest quality and most expensive cameras in the world. Using a PhaseOne camera is like driving a car built for a racetrack: they are difficult to handle and uncomfortable to use. They are also less forgiving to any mistakes you make. But when you do it right, nothing compares in performance. Shooting with a PhaseOne felt to me like an all or nothing experience, you either nail the shot or fail in a miserable way.

If this was not pressure enough, shooting from a moving helicopter has its own set of challenges including very limited room to maneuver while hanging from the side door, to finding the right composition while you are moving, to avoiding the engine's vibration mess up your images.

Luckily the Norse god Odin seemed to smile upon our efforts that day and the images captured are as mesmerizing as the place itself. 

We flew through valleys and plains of the South coast of Iceland. We flew over black sand beaches as they got hammered by an agitated North Atlantic ocean, leaving a tapestry of white foam to fade after each wave.

Right as we were on this part of the journey rain started pounding on our helicopter, adding another degree of drama to the experience.

With fortune on our side, the rain cleared and we pushed through until we made it to the river deltas that feed from the meltwater off Vatnajökull glacier.

The combination of crystal clear water running over rich colored sand and ash created a spectacle difficult to describe. Even some of the images I took need an explanation as they look more like abstract expressionist paintings than photographs. The clouds opened up every once in a while, allowing the sun to come through and making the colors to pop out. Those were the few ideal moments to capture strong images.

We flew over ice sheets that have black ash lines running across. As these followed the uneven movement of the ice through time they created patterns that seemed too beautiful to be created by chance.

On our way back we flew over glaciers, mountains, waterfalls and all those postcard-perfect landscapes that define Iceland.

Arriving at the hotel tired yet excited to see the images, we decided to leave the editing process for the next morning as it had been a long day. That’s when we learnt that all-time temperature records were shattered that day as a result of a heatwave that swept across Europe. Let me say that again. The very day we photographed melted ice from Europe’s largest glacier was the hottest day ever recorded in many parts of the continent.

It was at that moment that this body of work took on a different dimension.

It turns out temperature records were not only broken in places like France, Belgium and Germany, but it was Iceland’s warmest July ever recorded. In mid August Icelanders held a funeral for Ok, their first glacier lost to climate change. It was a move to raise awareness about the effects our changing climate is having on the island nation.

In Ok's place, a somber commemorative plaque acknowledges its loss and gives a dire warning for the remaining glaciers. It also includes the current carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations in the atmosphere. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is one of the primary indicators of climate change.

The reason I made this trip was to capture strong, compelling images and craft them into art pieces. These artworks are a testament to the times we live in and will make great decorative pieces. They tell the story of the biggest environmental challenge we face as a generation in an aestetically powerful way. I imagine the proud owner sharing what the art represents and get excited about the possibilities in those conversations. If you'd like to see an example of the art pieces I created with images from this trip you can find one here.

In a future post I will write about the role of art in the environmental crisis. The conversation needs to include a reflection on the carbon footprint of projects like this one and weigh the benefits vs the costs. I would love to hear your thoughts on this and future blogposts so feel free to leave a comment below. Thanks for reading.