The postmodern era—with the end of metanarratives and absolute truths, with deconstruction, the multiplicity of voices, and globalization—has left us submerged in the solitude of contemporary life. In my photographic series titled Nobody, I capture this feeling of distance. The world moves at full speed, yet we remain immersed in absence.
These images were taken in Colombia and around the world. They are created in situ. They appear with their own emotional weight, and I am fortunate enough to have my camera in hand to photograph them. My photographs convey a sense of solitude, nostalgia, and melancholy. The constant in each one of them is the absence of people—an uncomfortable absence, as these are places meant for encounter, yet no one is there.
In these images, perspective and light are the true protagonists. There is an inherent sense of evocation in the composition of each photograph, awakening in the viewer a subtle and delicate charm toward absence.
Just as beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, so too does solitude—or more precisely, it is felt.
Nobody is a black-and-white photographic series that seeks to convey a feeling of nostalgia. Some photographs are romantic, others are emotionally charged, others are imposing, and others are beautiful in their simplicity. All the places portrayed in my work possess the ideal magic to be enjoyed in company… yet what is truly sublime is their solitude—a solitude that unsettles, saddens, weighs on the heart, and in some way elevates the soul and nourishes dreams.
Nobody is a work about solitude that predisposes us to dream of companionship.
The adhesive vinyl print on glass and its wooden box frame give the installation a sense of depth. The images seem to extend beyond the frame, reaching out to the viewer.
Marcela Bellini
After its invention in the nineteenth century, photography began to align itself with different arguments. At first, its main purpose seemed to be documentation. But the images themselves began to acquire life and independence, and many photographer-artists sought to transcend simple capture, initiating various reflections on what the camera had achieved. Intentions found meanings, and photographs were thus able to surpass their own condition and move toward offering states of thought and consciousness.
Photography initially emerged in black and white or sepia. When color development appeared, many photographers believed that black-and-white images were more powerful and captured more effectively the interplay of light and shadow. Those who immediately embraced polychromy had to confront color and reflect upon it so that it could function within the parameters of meaning and signification.
Photography aspires to convey ideas that challenge the very images it presents. Emotional charge and intention determine the final result and liberate the work from any kind of innocence. In this pursuit, many artists have used the camera to expose their thoughts and arguments with the same force as in any other visual form of materialization—painting, drawing, video, installations, performances. Artists who have adopted photography have redeemed this medium and positioned it among the most powerful forms of expression.
Today we have a series of large-format black-and-white photographs that, under the concept of absence, offer architectural spaces traditionally used for public gatherings. What Marcela Bellini seeks in capturing these places—where humans are absent—is to provoke a metaphysical reflection that includes exclusion and emptiness as values deserving reconsideration.
The photographs show tea rooms, subway stations, bullrings, buildings with windows, rural paths, beaches, cemeteries—captured in different places around the world—yet all completely empty, where the people who inhabit and traverse them every day are nowhere to be seen. That lack compels us to focus more intently on these settings and observe their architecture or their landscape offerings. Each place reveals its own internal laws and allows its physical characteristics to be more clearly perceived.
Marcela Bellini has concentrated her interest on these solitary spaces, and by assembling them as a series, she seeks to generate allegories that speak of absence, solitude, and nostalgia as a way of evoking intimate emotions.
Miguel González
Curatorship
September 2015
