To Pedro Aceituno Garrido (Jaén, 1962), taking a camera on his hands, penetrating into the town, or getting lost in the countryside is a liking that makes him happy. He isn’t a professional, but in him there’s a deeply felt vocation for photography and many tasks done with desire to better himself and with sense of improvement. He looks for themes, especially the human ones, and waits as long as it’s necessary, slowly, patiently, in order to catch anything that attracts his attention. Having making the effort, he almost always fulfils his mission. He’s never completely satisfied because he aspires to something more and that’s his secret.

Married Magdalena Morales Pérez, and father of two, Pedro Aceituno Aceituno is a member of the Town Fire Station of the Council of Jaén. He says that he’s proud of being a firefighter because of the risky part at the others’ service of the profession, when it comes to put out a fire or take care of people in misfortune. This firefighter, apart from his daily job, which forces him to have a good physical training and the typical knowledge of the job, has a lot of time of expectancy, waiting for some call. Spare, wasted time, that is not completely like that. He’s on the alert continually. But at the opportunity of reading, painting, drawing, doing any activity that is useful to him for forging his cultural heritage. Pedro Aceituno makes the most of his free time to make it useful by consolidating his work in photography, which he adores. Fruit of those interests, in contact with the former Photographic Association of Jaén, or at the Art and Jobs School, or with professionals such as his friend Manuel Ordóñez, now an excellent photographer in Madrid; is his progress in this field having quite a lot of prizes and appearing in several collective exhibitions. Thus, in this way, he arrives at this individual Exhibition which he shows at La General. Always, since he became fond of photography, he’s interested in people, characters, whether official or private or popular, at the most various levels, the figures that create the human situation. Proper nouns both from the town and from the countryside. He picks up their expressions, their countenances, from all angles, after a reliable, well made work. And with that he wants to bring these figures near the ordinary people, so that the viewer sees them in different dimensions.

Pedro Aceituno Garrido’s idea is admirable. And the project is now a reality with this first exhibition into which he has put, along with the technique, a big dose of enthusiasm. With that he gives a response to a calling that he feels deep inside. He also pays homage to the town in the people photographed. But what I’ve noticed most was that the photographer has done his work with an unpretentiousness out of the ordinary and only with the aim of showing the others some characters’ soul. And in order to prove that the art of photographs requires a lot of inquiry and quite a lot of surprise ability in images that are worth as much or more than the most eloquent words.

Vicente Oya Rodríguez

Official chronicler of the Town of Jaén