Submission by Alejandro Acevedo:
Espacios ( Spaces) is a very personal series related to two events that turned the quiet practice of photography into an alternative way of life: moving to a city like Havana and being diagnosed with otosclerosis, with no immediate solution. I began to observe the city with the detachment and expectation (or estrangement) of someone who does not belong to it. The gradual loss of my hearing led me into a certain degree of social isolation, and my perception became increasingly dependent on the visual. The photographs emerged from moments of introspection, from long walks through the city, with no other intention than to escape the anxiety that stillness caused me.
Through that exercise, I began to identify certain spaces as possible stages. I sense that something subtle is happening in them, or is about to happen. Then I stop. With my eye fixed on the viewfinder of my camera, I wait. I am interested in allowing the scene to reveal itself on its own; that is why I return to these spaces by day and by night, at different moments, until I find the atmosphere, the right character, the cars, the reflections, the gaze that, without editing, reveal the scene.
Once the work had accumulated, Espacios was born, a series of photographs I have been developing since 2019 in Havana, Cuba.
Ultimately, it is a way of looking at the contours inhabited by waiting, where I perceive the anticipation and uncertainty latent in the images as a muffled sound. I am never entirely sure whether that sound comes from the surroundings, from a decaying city suspended in another time, or from within ourselves.
#noicemag #photography
