Artist Felipe Romero Beltrán Asks, In the Digital Age, Is Photography Becoming Exhausted?

AGE: 31
BASED IN: Paris
NOMINATED BY: Tyler Mitchell

Images are a non-verbal thinking device, meaning they are much older than verbal thinking. Therefore, they are rooted in our culture in an intrinsic way. I grew up in a culture where the image is almost a mystery. It has a sacred and intimate component. In that sense, my work is rooted around this notion.

I believe the photographic image experiences a process of exhaustion, particularly in our generation. We can see it in the mass media, in our relationship with images. One picture could mean everything and nothing at the same time. That’s why I believe the image must be every time more silent, every time slower, every time more non-communicative, so it can mean more.

Right now, I’m reading Elective Affinities by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It is a book about an aristocratic couple of the last pre-industrial period, who dedicate themselves to maintaining their land and building gardens, somewhat in the spirit of late German Romanticism. It is interesting how the book describes a practice that is not photographic (a couple building a garden), but at the same time inspires my work with the care and dedication depicted in every sentence of the book.