In order to call myself a photographer, I should first of all take pictures: to think, to feel and to do like in the early years when I discovered the potentials of sight and camera. Sometimes I think I still am. But I tend to be tempted by other activities in which the purity of the photographic act, with images isolated from concept, is relegated by other techniques that, while maintaining its photographic quality, leave aside the great flash of spontaneity.

Then I understand why it’s easier to call oneself an artist. I am a photographer, but I am usually distracted: I occasionally find topics of my interest that I try to interpret and transform into images where “pure” photography does not give me enough to show what I feel. And if I don’t achieve my goal using only photography, it’s because of my shortcomings. But the need for expression is stronger than the means to be employed, and then I appeal to other resources. I don’t blame myself for it: I am what I have become as a self-taught experimenter.

There is one thing I understood: expressing myself photographically -and photography itself-, is an extremely arduous discipline for me. Getting good pictures is difficult, as much as it is to define when an image is good and when it is not. As far as I’m concerned, there’s an emotion that wakes up when I look at certain photographs, and that usually lasts in my memory. That emotion can be related to humor, fear, aesthetic pleasure, melancholy, anger, disgust, irony, passion or calm. Photography, a two-dimensional entity, is self-sufficient. For many of us it is also necessary, even if we don’t know why. When I take a photograph that pleases me (which doesn’t happen very often), it’s as if the camera and I suddenly have the same thought. Then we pronounce ourselves simultaneously, in a confluence of intuition and speed. The rest happens alone, almost without intention. Or maybe there’s a kind of tacit agreement: to put aside all conceptualization and to just photograph.

My camera has film inside, I’ve left the house aimlessly, and I’m wearing a pair of comfortable shoes. That’s all I need. Even if it’s for a while, I’ll try to become a photographer again.