• HOME
  • ASERICAN
  • NEWS
  • EXCLUSIVE
  • INTRODUCING
  • DAYS AND PLACES
  • MORE
  • ABOUT US
  • Something has shifted. Something between The East and The West. There’s a New Frontier and there’s a New Citizenship. L.A Tokyo Moscow London Shanghai Bucharest Bangkok Milan NewYorkCity Seoul Paris Zurich Madrid Berlin Beijing. Aserican are from Everywhere. Aserica. It's Asia - America - and the Whole World in between.

    DAYS & PLACES

    The Deeper Meaning.

    Photographer Joel Jimenez Jara shares insight to his what inspired him to pick up a camera, his own photography language, and the message behind his art.
    The Deeper Meaning.
    Photography by Joel jimenez Jara, Interview by Natalie Malheiro.

    NM: When did you start photography What inspired you to start taking photos?

    JJ: I started studying photography 3 years ago, I'm currently in the last year of my bachelor's degree in the field.
    Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I was drawn to cinema and movies, so photography was just a natural extension of that desire to build narratives with images; I believe that filmmaking is still a big reference in my work and how I compose pictures as "stills" or establishing shots in a film.

    NM: From your work, I see you mostly shoot landscapes and scenery, what is it about these elements you like to photograph?

    JJ: When you start developing your language in any particular visual field, you realize that there are certain elements that give you broader possibilities to communicate your message, the landscape does that for me.
    I think that the places that I'm trying to show are representations of human conditions, of the interactions that take place in our society.
    I try to reflect on these issues by distancing myself from the human form and presenting a scenery that is simple at first glance, but ambiguous and interpretative once you look at it with depth.

    NM: In this series you use interesting tones and colour pallets. How do you use colour in your photography?

    JJ: The use of colour is essential for my work because of the way it triggers an emotional response in the viewer.
    For this particular work, I wanted to use shades of blue and desaturation to convey a nostalgic mood in the images, the neutral colours help set a calm and contemplative tone, showing the degradation of the place but in a soothing manner.

    NM: In this series, where were the photos taken? What drew you to these areas?

    JJ: The photographs were taken all over Europe, from Norway to Spain and places in between.
    In a broad sense, I was looking for the concept of solitude, that meant that every space photographed was a subjective representation of that theme, so there wasn't anything specific that I was looking, just signs and connoted elements that helped with the interpretation of the subject.