As a conceptual artist, I use photography to explore questions about who we are, how we perceive and the ways in which we live.
The photographs I create are literally fictions meant to seem like snapshots of "reality." The implication is that our reality is created through the limitations of our perceptions.
My approach is to shoot many photographs and then assemble parts of those individual photos into a final coherent work——similar to the way our senses take in bits of information and then assemble those bits into a "coherent reality."
This also allows me greater flexibility in controlling the visualization of each series' concept. I'm not attempting to find that unique moment and then document it. I am trying to create that "unique moment," which makes my process closer to a cinematographer (or a painter) then a documentarian.
The photos represented here are a kind of "marvelous reality" or as Alejo Carpentier (the magical realist writer) mentioned, the seizing of the mystery that breathes behind all things.
Francisco Diaz
........................................................................................................
Walnuts and Watermelons
As Nasrudin rested under a tall walnut tree one day, he looked a few yards to his side and noticed a big watermelon growing on a thin vine near the ground.
Nasrudin looked up and said, “Great God, please permit me to ask you this: why is it that walnuts grow on big strong trees, while watermelons grow on thin weak vines. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?”
But at that very moment, a walnut fell from high on up in the tree and hit Nasrudin square on the head.
“Ah!“ remarked Nasrudin. “I suppose Nature’s ways might not be as backward as I thought. After all, if a big watermelon fell out of the tree and onto my head, it might have killed me!“
Mulla Nasrudin
The photographs I create are literally fictions meant to seem like snapshots of "reality." The implication is that our reality is created through the limitations of our perceptions.
My approach is to shoot many photographs and then assemble parts of those individual photos into a final coherent work——similar to the way our senses take in bits of information and then assemble those bits into a "coherent reality."
This also allows me greater flexibility in controlling the visualization of each series' concept. I'm not attempting to find that unique moment and then document it. I am trying to create that "unique moment," which makes my process closer to a cinematographer (or a painter) then a documentarian.
The photos represented here are a kind of "marvelous reality" or as Alejo Carpentier (the magical realist writer) mentioned, the seizing of the mystery that breathes behind all things.
Francisco Diaz
........................................................................................................
Walnuts and Watermelons
As Nasrudin rested under a tall walnut tree one day, he looked a few yards to his side and noticed a big watermelon growing on a thin vine near the ground.
Nasrudin looked up and said, “Great God, please permit me to ask you this: why is it that walnuts grow on big strong trees, while watermelons grow on thin weak vines. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?”
But at that very moment, a walnut fell from high on up in the tree and hit Nasrudin square on the head.
“Ah!“ remarked Nasrudin. “I suppose Nature’s ways might not be as backward as I thought. After all, if a big watermelon fell out of the tree and onto my head, it might have killed me!“
Mulla Nasrudin
