Art is for me a way of transforming reality with an expressive purpose. My favourite artworks are those that use the expressive tools of the chosen media form (in this case, photography) to materialize a very subjective vision of the human experience, exploring unconventional forms of beauty and immersing us in that personal world with such a power of fascination that when our journey comes to an end we need to take a couple of deep breaths to readapt to reality.
Such work should take some risks to deal with old subjects in a novel way, and in doing that it might face rejection from large numbers of viewers who are not used to such representations. It challenges the spectator and at the same time gets her involved.
Iʼve always been attracted to darkness. Exploring the murky corners of the human soul has always been more appealing to me than indulging in rosy views of it. Iʼve also been passionate about films and their power to provoke the most intense emotions since I was a child. I originally wanted to become a filmmaker. With photography, I found a different way to tell stories through images while still delving into the shadows.
Maybe that explains why the work Iʼm presenting here is dominated by dark key images and dramatic light, and why there seems to be a latent narrative component to them. These images are part of an ongoing series where we explore different objects and spaces in a flat. All of them seem irrelevant, but when we look at them this way a sense of “life in the house” appears to emanate from them: these objects and spaces have obviously been used by somebody we donʼt know and that suggests a hidden story or background behind them.
It can be seen as some kind of approach to the still life genre, but unlike in a traditional still life, most of the objects havenʼt been deliberately arranged in a particular way for compositional purposes. Rather, I have looked for life within and around the objects, suggesting instead of showing to make the spectator curious about the circumstances happening out-of-field. Along with a very graphic visual style, I have ultimately tried to reveal the ordinary in a new light.
About Alex Lobo
Alex Lobo was raised in Madrid, Spain. Being passionate about all kinds of visual arts since an early age, he graduated from an audiovisual technical school and moved to London in 2005, where he soon developed a passion for photography that has also accompanied him to Japan, his home since 2013. He specializes in fine art, travel and portrait photography.
