ARTnudes Network – Figure Models

Rafael Roa – Spain – 10 Questions

I am attracted to storytellers. And when I found Rafael Roa’s work I fell in love with what he was saying. I saw angst and anguish, triumph and strength. Fluid thought and something so much more than beautiful women. There is a thought process here. Anyone can point their lens at a body and take a photograph, but without ideas it short changes not only the model and her ability, but humanity in general. We have so much more to say! Roa has ideas and a story. I am happy to present his work and interview.

 

AN: Where are you living and how are fine art nudes embraced in your country? Good, bad? Indifferent? Are they celebrated?

RR: In my country, Spain, there is no specific circuit for fine art nude photography. It is probably the same situation in the USA, with specialized galleries with exhibits by contemporary authors of great prestige, such as Robert Mapplethorpe, Helmut Newton, Joel Peter Witkin, Araki, or Jan Saudek, as well as Spanish photographers that do some nude photography, like Alberto Garcia Alix. 

AN: In many of the photographs I saw on your website, RafaelRoa.net, your Polaroid images, some of the models have shrouds covering their heads/faces. Is there a meaning for this? Did they wish to remain anonymous or were you making a statement?

RR: When I started my work “Hidden Desires”, back in 1988, the germinal idea was to focus on bodies with absence of any look from the eyes. That is, naked bodies with an independent life. That is the reason, from my part, for covering the faces of the models.

In my pictures, I try to tell stories, open stories that can be interpreted, understood in different ways from different viewers of the work. From my point of view, a picture is a piece of a visual narrative, and a nude picture is not only a beautiful body in front of a camera with nice lighting to achieve only beauty from an aesthetic stance. I like to tell stories, to suggest situations that can be elaborated to different solutions in the minds of each viewer.

Jan Saudek told stories from his humid room in Prague, and in such a way he revolted with his photographs against dictatorship and society. 

My photographs are not born in the studio, they take form in my own imagination and after that, I embody those ideas in photographs. I absolutely do not take hold of the camera without a previously conceived idea about what I really want to do.

 

 

 

 

AN: Speaking of Polaroid – how much has the discontinuation of this film affected your work?

RR: It has affected me much, so much that one can say that this is one of the main reasons that drives me now to be devoted more to video art than to still photography.

The demise of Polaroid Type 55, and in some way of several types of baryta papers, films and developers, has been capital for a radical change.

Of course, one can still work on analog black and white, but it is getting more and more difficult to get your hands on those products compared to a few years ago. 

There is no way you can compare digital black and white with a traditional baryta paper, even with the new baryta paper for Lamda or Gicleé printers. Most of the digital cameras are in a way small “picture oriented” computers, with too many adjustment parameters which are full of bugs: it looks like the manufacturers are in a hurry to sell as many units as they can. Not so long ago, manufacturers developed and made their cameras with the great photographers in mind, and right now, they concoct their products for the masses of consumers that know nothing, nor do they want to know anything, about Photography.

AN: What is your camera/lens of choice?

RR: Hasselblad CX with a 150 mm lens and a Cambo 4×5″ with a Nikkor 210 mm f/5.6 lens.

AN: What do you search for in a model? Attitude? Look? Performance?

RR: I choose my model depending of the idea in my mind about the picture I want to create so as to tell the story. I look for a kind of body that suits it.

AN: Why are you shooting nudes? What do nudes in photography lend to the art form that other forms of photography wouldn’t necessarily speak through art?

RR: For me, a nude is a way to convey my own ideas, it is actually a way to transgress, to oppose a self indulging sleeping society that sits herself every night in front of the TV screen and assimilates all kinds of violence and injustice, but gets offended and scandalized when confronted with a naked body.

When I opt for an especially provocative nude, I try to challenge the viewer, so as he might question himself why he feels scandalized by a nude that arouses him sexually and does not feel the same way for assassination, wars or injustices.

 

 

 

 

AN: How often are you able to practice your art form? 

RR: As I said before, I only take hold of the camera when I have an idea to convey.

AN: What forms of marketing do you use to mae sure your work is seen by the right people for gallery exhibitions and book publications?

RR: I try to show my work to art galleries or magazines as to publish portfolios. Regretfully, in my country, art galleries are not interested in nudes as works for exhibits or their customers. They exhibit usually landscape work from German authors, or worse, from a legion of imitators, whose work sells well in the Art Biennale. That Kind of ornamental work experiences a great commercial success and swamps, nowadays, the marketplace.

But, if we speak about lanscape photography, I have my own preferences, and they are oriented mostly to the American New Color from the eighties, as well as to the work of European photographers the likes of Luigi Ghirri, Gilbert Fastenaekens or the Spanish photographer Valentin Sama.

 

 

AN: What photographers have inspired you to make fine art nudes, or models for that matter?

RR: I do not tend to look for inspiration in other authors, but the ones who most interest me go from the classics such as Edward Weston to others like Mapplethorpe, Newton, Araki, Saudek, Witkin, Nan Goldin, Sieff, Jock Sturges, Steve Anchell, Miguel Oriola or Liu Zheng.

AN: How are you printing your final image? What methods have worked best for you and what have you found most archival and luxurious?

RR: From my point of view, there is no better method for black and white than to print on traditional baryta paper, following the “wet” museum quality archival processing. As for color, there is no match for a camera-original 20×24 inch Polaroid Print.

 

Thank you Rafael.

You may visit Rafael at his Official site: www.rafaelroa.net