Aviles,
Partly thanks to photographer Ricardo Cases and the short film Those who want by Elena López Riera, she is increasingly known than in the Levante area, and also in Andalusia, there are societies of Palomists either Colombaireswith their own statutes, who spend time, money and illusion raising Palomos with a view to participating in a half -way contest between sport and insistent courtship: those pigeon flocks, with the wings painted very brightly colored, pursue a dove that finally chooses the one that has followed it for a long time. These are animal maneuvers in the sky with more connotations than those of a peculiar custom: the aesthetic result of this rite of rigging are very living abstractions that are drawn in the air.
Cases, born in Orihuela at the beginning of the seventy and resident in Torrent, is a friend and admirer of some of those of those Palomists; He has observed conscientiously this rite and his waiting and his patience was born Air doveseries made in 2011 that, after passing through the Canal de Isabel II room of the Community of Madrid, the Alcobendas Art Center, the Encounters of Arles, Geneva, Paris and Colonia, can be contemplated until October at the Niemeyer de Avilés Center. The images that integrate it arose from work processes based on the union of freedom, chance and perseverance, and if a common link is its light: an overwhelming Mediterranean luminosity that reveals the peculiarities of the landscape and of those who inhabit it, the mutual influence between the earth and its inhabitants and, above all, the changes that that region has known generated and their survivors. Among the latter, the orchards, so entrenched in the culture of this area that neither the mass tourism nor the empire of the roundabouts have (not quite) with them.
Cases’ photographs do not flee from the topics and kitsch, and have a very clear playful component, but they offer those possible easy and open reading visions of the Mediterranean reading, new and hopeful approaches. To better understand the starting point from which this author works, keep in mind that he studied journalism and began photographing on commission before deciding to start his most personal work; He did it, like so many of his generation, joining a collective (where appropriate, Blank Paper) and publishing his images in fanzines and photolibros, sometimes self -edited. In fact, the photographs that make up this series of dove in the air went through books and magazines, many widely recognized inside and outside Spain and reissued, rather than by the exhibition halls.
We must not interpret them solely as documents or chronic images. He speaks of complood and self -criticism: his contemporary conjunction – almost fusion – of feism and beauty and his fixation for showing nature, orchards, old age …, the outbreaks of the past and tradition that have not yet been annulled, respond to a claim of that forgotten memory from at least as social approaches. Does not attend to slogans: look, photography and then reflect on what was behind those visions, letting the public take out their conclusions.
Its referents are varied, some more obvious and others less. Certain Mediterranean visions can make us think of Martin Parr, and its architectures of Veraneo cities, in Pérez yes, but, in terms of ways of working, constant observation in chosen places with Cristóbal Hara or Josef Koudelka. His is, however, an original approach, between critic and celebratory, of an urban and vital disorder that is not only Levantine and an equally original narrowing of ties between these pigeons flying and competing for the favors of the females and a symbolism linked to the Levantine identity, to the sense of belonging and rituals to a traditional and current time in which the unusual follows.
Colombian farming is already a disuse activity, but from the beauty and hope that the images of persecution give off reflections can be extracted universally shared desires by human beings, inside and outside the popular contexts and only apparently trivial root.
Ricardo Cases. “Air dove”
