Spanish photographer David Jiménez just reedited his book Infinito, first published in 1998. The occasion to (re)discover his poetic and intense universe made of diptychs. Stories to build and rebuild.
“Photography has the ability to transmit many information, by bypassing rational thinking. It offers so many meanings. I love its ambiguity”,
David Jiménez declares. The Spanish photographer has been practicing photography for 30 years, and is an artist who loves questioning our conception of reality. “I create new images by gathering fragments. It is up to the reader to build bridges between them, and to tell their own stories”. Published for the first time in 2000, David offered his book Infinito a second life. “Much to my surprise, almost 20 years after its first publication, Infinito seems to spark off a certain enthusiasm, more than before, even – it was a time where books were not as popular as they are today”, the photographer tells us. This is the occasion to rediscover his black and white diptychs.
Dialogue in diptychs
David’s work is disconcerting, because he has always refused to guide his readers. One may seek guidelines, but he never added any : the image is sufficient on its own and is more important than any story. His diptychs form a clever balance between style and content, and the meanings depends on anyone’s sensitivity. One may focus on matter, while the other may be fascinated by the symbolical dialogue existing between two pictures. There resides the photographer’s genius. His pictures are filled with significations one must decipher. We meet, for example, a man devoured by his cigarette smoke. Facing him, a misty landscape. Two pictures representing the complexity of our world. Later on, in a bare setting, a man is turning his back on us. By his side, a line, facing him. Gravity, and then silence. The images are so fragmented they open wide the scope of interpretations. At each glance, an element appears, if we turn the page, another one pops out. “It is true that they are an infinity of beginnings and ends”, David confides. The story extends each time, and will delight the most imaginative readers.
© David Jiménez
Infinito, 35eur, 35 €, 128 p (autoédition)
