Back in the 21st century, when screenagers are growing into grandparenthood, mentioning those two artists along with the work of the four contemporary photographers 1:1 Photo Magazine features this time highlights the effects of time in such a specific topic as the relationship between the city and its inhabitants and also some of the great side topics: immigration, solitude, progress....
Cédric Spilthooren pictures from undersoil, he sets a direct communication line with the Chinese immigrants in Paris. Souls with a clean gaze. The images introduced are sited in an idealistic scenery which symbolises how Asians feel attracted for Europe. We can see the uncertainty of the dreams in their eyes, the nostalgia of the prospective past, the rush of the explorer. The secrets of emotions and reason are left behind. Living is living the moment, the moment can be beautful, or the promise of a better future.
Tany Kely moulds the Homo Urbanicus, a common human species that walks all in black along the geometry of the city, with iron and shadows. They come from nowhere and go nowhere. Their pace looks confident and limber, however, there's no certain destination. Their presence is anonymus and, even if it moves, nothing happens since some other anonymus presence will take their place. The Homo Urbanicus, replacer of the Homo Sapiens, only reveals themselves once we find out, through the looking into the images, that they have left their souls in a glass bubble at home.
Jacobo Medrano switches the angle of his lenses so he lets us dive into the urban web of Tokyo, parabola of modern times and rusty pores. Within this context, we meet characters in pain, products of the new fears surrounding. His gaze is shy, distant, bent; oblique so as not to crash with other's gaze. They wander within a Sloterdijk sphere that keeps away from conflicts: solitude and isolation as the drives of the fears of the environment. Jacobo Medrano recreates the modern city seen as a great womb where a countless number of tiny beings live together and, thanks to science, they will meet only in the future.
Kurt Petautschnig clicks the button in his camera and deletes humanity from the earth, he turns the city into this inanimated ghost covered with a pile of stuff. Thanks to such stillness, we become the mute witnesses of a tiresome irrelevant monotony. The variety of colours and objects highlight the lack of life, only the darkness of an opposite past is left. The display window turns into a whole symbol: a facade that means nothing when nobody is in there, an empty colourful shell ready to be devoured by ants and robins.
Hoping you all will enjoy our number 11,
Eduardo Ruigómez
