NAU NUA: AITOR ORTIZ

Everything is there

Aitor Ortiz © + courtesy Aitor Ortiz

With the book Gaudí. Intimate impressions self-published by photographer Aitor Ortiz in 2019, I discovered the work of an artist with a different look, indeed intimate, as well described by the title of a book highlighted by the Spanish cultural magazine Babelia as one of the best photography books of 2019. Intimate impressions is the title of a musical piece by the Catalan composer Frederic Mompou that clearly inspires the sequence of photographs interspersed with wide white spaces, as well as its edition on a delicate fragile paper, which needs the same delicacy on the part of the observer. An intimate, delicate, close and deep look that, based on the work of the Catalan architect, creates new visions, beyond architecture.

Now Aitor Ortiz presents at the Galerie Springer in Berlin his series Estorninos / Starlings in a delicate dialogue with the series Wo Fuchs und Hase/ Where the fox and the hare by the photographer Maria Jauregui Ponte (interview), forming the exhibition Natural appearance through January 29, 2022 . Once again, the delicacy, the ephemeral, the fragile, seen in the choreographies of the starlings in the air, as distant black dots highly contrasted with a radical white background, are shown to us as ethereal and elegant forms, almost of contemporary architecture.

Why did you choose photography as a profession?

Photography allows me to approach countless topics, explore them and adopt a position and opinion about them, and the decision to represent something in a determined and deliberate way. It is a very enriching profession in which you are constantly learning.

What does the Natural appearance exhibition represent to you?

The exhibition deals with invisibility, actions that go unnoticed but nevertheless happen, and actions that occur deliberately and yet seem random or unpredictable.

In your works featured in the exhibition, that absolute white background stands out. What is the reason for this choice?

They are photographs of formations created by large masses of birds that, isolated from their natural background, taken out of their original context and carried on a white canvas, evoke gestures, and any type of attitude or social action.

The mass of birds form a superior entity of graceful movements. What inspires you to capture that natural reality?

All structures, whether constructive or social, pre-exist in nature, perhaps in a different order or scale, but everything is there.

Aitor Ortiz Estorninos 010 © Aitor Ortiz courtesy Galerie Springer Berlin

Do you see that same capacity for beauty in the human mass?

Of course, they are images of social structures. Each individual behaves in an autonomous way, but coordinated with his seven closest flight companions. These structures created by hundreds, or thousands of nodes that react in a collective and coordinated way are a metaphor for social behavior.

How do your works interact with those contributed by Maria Jauregui, from such a different perspective?

I think they interact very well. Both works deal with aspects related to visibility and perception.

It is almost a dance between darkness and light, oppression and freedom, fear and hope. The duality of existence?

I would define it as a choreography of life. We establish rules and strategies that we have to make flexible to be able to solve any unforeseen event.

What are you looking for in photography?

The tension and questioning between reality and fiction, between reality and how it is represented to us.

What are your future projects?

At the beginning of 2022 I will present in Barcelona a photographic project about the work of the architect Antoni Gaudí and I am currently preparing a tribute work to the German photographer Karl Blossfeldt and his famous botanical images.

An interview by Juan Carlos Romero

For further information about Aitor Ortiz please visit www.aitor-ortiz.com