Joaquín Luna

Incorporeal

Shadows: Being again Crosses, they cross. Escape. We’ll never cease being and we never were. Downcast, The mark condemns, sets free. Again, the paper is stained by blood The time goes back Clock hands are collapsing. The limit, the beginning is also there. Emptiness vanishes, they disintegrate, are forgotten, merged with the Whole. It’s only in your mind Like metallic voices that echo in the Dome they rise, reflect, take delight in one another. They’re on the other side Behind the plastic curtain and they carry on, without being, Light.

Photographer

Joaquín Luna

Determined to trap an internal moment, visual artist Joaquín Luna captures confessional compositions where the essence of individuals and environments intermingle with the artist’s own psyche. These existential inquiries are investigated through melancholic visual arrangements imbued with ambiguity, where decontextualized settings and isolated personalities delineate notions of disconnection. A sense of complexity is further encouraged by opposing muted and saturated colors, intentional and coincidental configurations, and hiding what is expected to be revealed, altogether gapping information and playing with tensions between reality and fiction. Unsettling atmospheres and liminal spaces are introduced by means of dividing elements such as mirrors, windows, and doors that, along with textures of glass, smoke, and rain frame glimpses of character that reinforce the uneasiness of the images. Suggestive instances stimulate the spectator to complete the fragmented narratives by projecting themselves into the scene. Inversely mirroring the observer's reaction, photographing becomes for Joaquín a refuge to encounter the self and activate sensations of solitude. Becoming both observer and observed, his work externalizes a faceless self-portrait.

His work has been published in books such as “Urban Photographer of the Year” (2019), in the 50K project curated by 14&15 Mobile Photographers, and in the magazines Street Photographers Foundation (2020), Life Framer (2020), LamonoMagazine (2019), Life is Street (2019), and PANORAMA1 (2018). He has been selected in LensCulture’s Awards Exposure (2020) Black and White (2018, 2019), and Street Photography (2018) and has been granted awards nationally and internationally including Urban Photographer of the year (Cbre EMEA Winner 2019), Night Life (Life Framer 2020), first prize in The Yellow Awards (Too Many Flash, 2019), street photography winner in the “Fine Art Photography Awards 2020 and finalist in the street photography category of Sony World Photography Awards (2020), and Roberto Villagraz Scholarships (EFTI, 2020).

-WORDS BY VANESSA MURRELL-

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