Every day we find crowds of artists who feel the duty to renew their plastic processes or the conceptions that provoke their creativity, in favour of the boasted originality. Innovation has soaked up the little pleasures of life, and therefore, the world of ideas. No wonder in that longed-for search for the difference, for the break, we find out great intellectual gaps.

At this point, it is my duty to point out the work of the photographer Pedro Aceituno Garrido. Without denying the possibility offered by experimenting on his compositions, this firefighter by profession confesses his elaborate work. He shows once again the greatness of photography in which the negative and the positive offer all their possibilities, filling his productions with the purest greys. An elaborate technique arranged as a reflecting instrument of a personal view. The most daily corners give this artist an excuse. Man, soaked up with his routine tasks, takes up a great deal of his shots. Far from artificial forced positions, he displays the strength of their actions, the mystery of the look or the power of a pair of hands interwoven. In this way, natural light gains the leading role to which it has a duty. Some faint rays envelop the portraits of his daughter or of a shepherd; they emphasize the outlines of those superb mulatto girls who swing their shiny hips; or, simply, in an attempt to understand his own relationship with life, he creates endless silences through doors ajar. Avoiding useless accessories and overelaborated sensations he exhibits his articles, as the purest Ansel Adams’s brother.

Maybe his intuitive way of taking photographs of things that surround him and the recognized conception of dilettante that he has about himself, are enough reasons to induce him to look for the technical perfection, the accuracy and the clearness in his works. Small but lively eyes and the spontaneous humbleness of his gestures encourage the interlocutor to discover his photography. Self-criticism is given as a direct cause of the seriousness and maturity of Pedro Aceituno’s work.

Ángela Kayser

Painter from Jaén