The World of street photographer Raul LaCroix
Wasn’t it Hungarian photographer Andre Kertesz who said that ‘seeing is not enough’? That ‘you have to feel what you photograph’? That is the impression I get when I see the work of Spanish street photographer Raúl LaCroix.
Here is passion, here is emotion, here is drama.
There is also, I have to say, a dreamlike-cum-cinematic quality to some of his work nurtured through an intoxicating use of reflections, shadows, light and colour.
Copyright ⓒ Raul LaCroix
The enigmatic girl at the very forefront of this shot has the air of a famous method actor in mid scene – leaning back, looking sultry and preoccupied, staring into the middle distance in an effort to remember her lines while listening to some unseen director. We notice a figure in the background in silhouette with their legs crossed, perhaps staring at the girl in a mysterious or even deadly manner.
‘Que quieres de mi?’
The girl might call out in Spanish (subtitled : ‘What do you want from me?)
“I took this photo in a store window,” Raúl tells me. “As you can see throughout my work, I pay a lot of attention to reflections.”
The girl, of course, is not a movie star but the street photographer has morphed her into one. She can finally have her moment of fame! A still from a single frame movie called : Que Quieres de Mi? I can see the posters for it now!
The photograph prompts questions. Is she waiting on the cross-legged silhouette? Is this, in fact, a clandestine rendezvous? Will we discover what is going on, will all be revealed as the narrative unfolds?
For now, we are stuck forever at this point in this particular photograph and it is all we have.
“It was in the afternoon,” he continues as if he were reading out of a book. “The sun was falling and shadows were very long. I found the girl to form quite an interesting layer in the photo. It seems to me it suggests a story.”
It does Raúl.
In art, in literature, in photography the key component is often the unfolding story that is being revealed by the artist/writer/photographer. The cues that the art lover or reader interpret and make sense of in their own unique head, begin to suggest a narrative built around the visual information presented. Subsequently, we try and fit the scene before us (visual or written) into our own existential experiences.
“I am very interested in creating mystery,” Raúl declares. “Inviting the reader to reread the photographs and discover in every reading a new detail or a story. For this I focus on light, composition, colour, and theme.
“Above all I pay a lot of attention to light. As Trent Parke says ‘light turns the ordinary into something magical’. The most important thing of all is that the light is never the same on any day of the year and that makes every moment unique.”
Andre Keretsz? Trent Parke? But who is name-dropping?
Copyright ⓒ Raul LaCroix
A young man stands by an iron girder waiting on a train, his face masked against the pandemic.
“This photo is from the series I made in New York,” Raúl remembers. “It was taken in the subway as you can see and the composition caught my attention, the diagonals that go towards the boy leaning on the column. At the same time the boy looks towards where those diagonals come from with a lost… far away from the rest of the world (look) – reflected in the people in the background who are on the other side of the platform.”
We wonder who the boy is and about the destination of the train he is waiting on.
“I capture day to day stories,” LaCroix says matter of fact. “I document the society in which we live from my point of view…as the point of view of everyone is influenced by his own life experiences, concerns, fears and… joys.”
A crucial point. When we interpret a piece of art, we do it from what we know and understand and from the markers laid down in our own existential journey. So that the reading of one particular photograph might, in fact have several different meanings to several different people and the photographer’s intentions in taking the shot in the first place might be at variance with what we might see and/or belief it is all about.
Copyright ⓒ Raul LaCroix
A man stands alone and masked against coronavirus in what might be a railway station. Above him the lights make the form of a cross, signifying life and death and compounding his solitude. He is looking down contemplating, perhaps, his own everyday trajectory?
It is a wonderful photograph in Raúl’s collection which I feel, for me, is symbolic of what we have been through in the pandemic.
“Composition is something important that I pay attention to, although it is already something intuitive,” Raúl continues. “I seek a balance between all parts of the frame; different layers of reading.”
Copyright ⓒ Raul LaCroix
His layered idea is important. In one of Raúl’s photographs he has two men seated at different tables, perhaps in a cafe. One man is checking his smartphone while the other appears to be speaking with someone. Bleeding into the shot, however, from behind them are huge buildings reminding us of how we interact with architecture and live within our self-created cities.
His use of reflection, light, shadow and colour all conspire to create new worlds which challenge, yet run parallel, to all of our everyday realities.
If we are capturing candid everyday happenings on the street, we may have to do so in a way that shows that everyone’s journey is, really, extraordinary, often amazing and sometimes surreal. Our lives are littered with milestones, good things that have happened to us as well as difficult periods when bad things occurred and luck was not with us. Our lives are brightened by light, often impaled on shadows as we desperately search for our own personal soul in reflection.
“Above all the ‘moment’,” Raúl reveals when I ask what attracts him to street photography. “That moment that will never happen again, because of everything that happens within a scene, the colour, the light, the gestures, the composition, the crossing of people, of glances. The fleeting and exclusive…moment. Something that will never be repeated and you have captured it forever. That moment of eternal silence in which all those factors have made a unique image and you have managed to immortalise it…”
Copyright ⓒ Raul LaCroix
Like his head on shot of the well-heeled smartly dressed man in his Paris Rouge series.
Copyright ⓒ Raul LaCroix
A masked man sits on the edge of a bench while above him a woman in a pool of beautiful light seems to emerge from the side of his head. It is one of those shots you have to look at more than once to work out what is going on. It is near abstract, quite surreal and captivating.
“I took it at the Atocha train station in Madrid,” Raúl explained to me. “I was on one of the trains. On the ceiling of the station there are large skylights through which at certain times of the year and at certain times of the day a rather special light passes through. In this photo I was lucky to find the girl in the background in one of these spotlights. When I saw it, I also found the light at the bottom in the shape of an arrow very interesting, marking the reading direction of the image.
“As you can see, it is also taken during the pandemic and I think it reflects important parts of the process that society has experienced. The man is sitting in a resting position, exhausted by the situation, you can also see the individuality and loneliness to which some people have been forced to suffer by the pandemic.”
I have to confess I didn’t see the COVID connection when I first saw this photograph.
“I considered becoming a member of a group in which I had colleagues with whom to talk about street photography, organise workshops, comment on work and thus evolve together as a collective,” Raúl goes on. “But I realised that currently there is a lot of competition, and the road is difficult. I am happy where I am and I stick to it. Next year I will release my first book and now I am working on two projects that I am particularly excited to accomplish.”
“I think that, in this life everything comes, you just have to be patient and most importantly passionate about it.”
Who would disagree?
Visit Raul at Raúl LaCroix
And also follow him on Instagram
Camera Equipment: Fujifilm XT-3 with a Fujinon 23mm f2 lens and also a Fuji X100F.
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