or are captured doing mundane things, such as browsing through old Vogue magazines in a bookshop. In tune with this unprocessed and subtle ideology, she told the publication Life Style Bazaar that she insists on using “black as the main color in my palette and basic forms and shapes. I try to escape from vintage, I am tired of reusing ‘the old.’ I want the new stuff.” While this appears true in her photographs, as the pictures do not recycle old photography tropes, it would also be fair to use the word nostalgic when describing the work of Coco Capitán. “I think I am a nostalgic person,” she noted. “I often forget the present by thinking about the past (or the future, actually).” She often uses a 35mm camera (that wistful lens!), and her blogspot includes collages that combine images such as models and landmarks with a childlike sense of wonder. Many of us remember cutting images from magazines apart in our youth, pasting them together in the way we best saw fit. The return to childhood playfulness and curiosity is present in Capitán’s photos. Despite referring to her art as “play” and insisting on using the word “game” over “work,” Capitán is making serious moves. She will soon graduate from school and will undoubtedly catch the attention of those outside of London – it’s only a matter of time. She is an elegant and admirable young artist, and the way she expressed herself when we spoke utterly reflected this truth. I’ll leave you with an unedited response from Capitán, which she answered after I asked “What excites you most about photography today?” It is too articulate to be edited. “I’m not sure what to think about today’s photography panorama. We are in the most democratic period 25
of photography since its creation, in the sense that everybody is familiar with taking pictures and sharing them instantly. It is one of the most powerful tools of communication, and we don’t even think about it. If you are young, you will probably find yourself spending time thinking about which picture represents you better (or which image you want to talk for yourself) to share in a social network. This is almost saying that we are using pictures to tell others who are we. Never before have images been this powerful in our ordinary life. This is also reflected in the enormous quantity of pictures we produce everyday and this brings us to the questions: are we talking about images? or photographs? And what makes a photograph different from an image? And an image-maker from a photographer? I don’t have an answer for that. Sometimes I find something I want to understand as a piece of art in the most vernacular image, other times I find images completely out of context in renown art galleries. Apart from a few accepted facts, today’s photography is just a matter of opinion.”
http://cocoladas.blogspot.cz/ http://cocoladas.tumblr.com/
by Zach Sokol