Diario Jaén. Thursday. November the 20th 2003

CULTURE · PEDRO ACEITUNO GARRIDO EXHIBITS A SERIES OF PORTRAITS IN THE HALL OF “LA GENERAL” IN JAÉN

He offers his black-and-white view about people of the present life in Jaén.

María Aldea Bustos · Jaén

A photographer who likes enquiring into human aspect. Pedro Aceituno Garrido exhibits, until November the 29th, at the hall which La Caja de Ahorros de Granada “La General” has in Jaén. Aceituno Garrido reached photography after his step through the Art School “José Nogué”. There he studied in the Forging Workshop, which he would take a series of photographs of, looking for the essence of that occupation; some of those photos were awarded some prizes on their day. He searches for soul, scent, the hidden substance which flows around the character. To him it’s important to contact with the person he’s going to portrait. The first thing that appealed him about photography, which he devotes a lot of time and money to, was controlling the process from the beginning until the end: “Since I take the roll of film until the photo is exhibited the only hands that take part are mine”. His works are in black-and-white film, processed by him: “With old pearly paper, toned with selenium for protection so that it remains there and photos are buried just as they are”.

The thematic basically approached by Aceituno Garrido are portraits: “I have landscapes and other types of photos, but here I’ve selected a series of portraits made since 1997”.

Dialogue and friendship

He does his job in his spare time, but to do it he has to be mentally ready, he doesn’t like arriving, “shooting” and saying bye-bye; he needs rest, peace and quiet. A work with a handmade process on which the artist’s hand also lies: “I owe much to photography. Thanks to it, I’ve known very worthy people in many fields, real artists among which I’ve made friends. I take human being very seriously and when I’m going to take a photograph I try to hit it off with the person, know his job, his longings and interests. There’s an exchange and complicity between the photographer and the portrayed”. By talking, conversing calmly, without looking at the watch, is how he manages to make the person forget the lens: “The photograph isn’t mine, they give it to me. What’s completely different is that my view, my work in the preparation and afterwards are unquestionable, but without them nothing’s possible”.

The importance of light to show the environment

JAÉN · He likes portraying the character in his environment and respecting the light that surrounds him: “The person, but also always his place, his environment. Most of the portraits I show on this exhibition are in their work places, except for some portrait in the exact foreground, which I wanted to point out because of its interest”. For working he uses a manual-focus camera, those in which you pass by hand, fixed lenses and with 35-mm negative and generally with a 400 to 425 ASA. “I’m not against new things, but for what I do I prefer this equipment”. He’s very scrupulous at the moment of measuring light, which plays a major role in his work: “Sometimes I measure light several times. I respect very much the lighting. On occasions it’s very intense, even excessive, spotlights such as in the case of the photo of Mariluz Espinilla, but you must respect the shadows of that light”. Aceituno Garrido doesn’t rule out putting those photos of people from Jaén together in a book, but he states that “it’s not the time yet”. · M. A.