Roberto Lombana (Bogotá 1977) presents a new body of experimental large-format pieces that function as a poetic documentation of the passage of time, using a combination of long exposure, straight photography and the body in motion. The subjects or protagonists that make these explosive large-format black and white photographs possible are dancers from the London Royal Ballet during their rehearsals at the Teatro Colon in Bogotá. The opportunity to photograph them immediately became the vehicle of his experiments in movement, by focusing on the study of time in photography. Photography is in essence, the process of drawing through the use of light, the visual representation of a spatial-temporal fraction on a stable emulsified surface. Lombana uses this strategy to produce a complete body of work where the poetics and theatricality of corporal movement, as well as the technicalities of photography are intimately intertwined.
Lombana began his career in the arts in...engraving and the meticulous and layered work it entails, although he has been involved with photography since early childhood. He began using photography as a tool for projecting images on a surface which he then painted. Progressively, he left painting behind to focus on direct photography and the architecture of space and its relation with the body in particular. As many photographers and artists such as Muybridge and Lartigue before him, the possibility of congealing movement through photography is an attractive oxymoron that opens many doors to explore possibilities. There is an experimental character to Lombana's oeuvre resulting from the uncertain and unexpected outcome of every click and its relation to the duration of the exposure and the shutter speed, enabling him to use a very technical aspect of photography as a tool for trial and error. The final images reflect Lombana's keen awareness of the ambiguity and versatility of photography as a medium for capturing and constructing realities based on his desire to challenge our notion of contemporary life.
In his previous body of work, Mandalas, Lombana also confronted spatial concerns and landmarks to produce re-constructed, digitally photographed urban or symbols like in a dream, representing possibly the viewer´s search for completeness and self-unity that would speak from a totally different visual perspective. Then, he was interested in how we imbue the spaces that surround us with sacredness by means of repetition, through the kaleidoscopic effect of a fisheye lens. In these elaborate constructions, he was able to produce a sense of stillness from something as dynamic as a city or a landmark.
On the other hand, with Light and Movement he prefers to play with time through the use of the straightforward tripod, long-exposure shot, without further digital intervention, combining the darkness of the scenario with the skilled movement of dancers. Above all, Lombana is interested in the possibility of controlling and freezing movement, of capturing the moments right before and after a dancer arrives at a pose through a contemplative narrative between the moving body and its capture of motion through radiance - light energy - on a sensitive surface. Lombana, inspired by the precepts of the Kinetic art movement, in which the eye is forced to move and construct colors and movement in complicity with the artwork, realizes that the slow shutter speed determines the intent to capture movement and, simultaneously, freeze its trace. He rationalizes abstraction and the kinetic by freezing motion in time.
Lombana´s strategy is to control exposure, to manipulate the shot and not the final image, to grasp the poetic gestures of a dancer´s body. Most importantly, however, his main interest is to engage the spectator by producing images that stimulate motion in the eye, hence the brain, inviting it to travel tirelessly through the image in the search of possible connections.
Amalia Caputo
Entrada actualizada el el 15 feb de 2016
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