Esteban Gutiérrez
Colombia, living in Spain
Esteban Gutiérrez is a Colombian photographer based in Barcelona. Trained at the IEFC (Institut d’Estudis Fotogràfics de Catalunya), his practice focuses on the observation and exploration of identity, as well as the relationship between spaces and the people who inhabit them.
His work falls within the realm of street photography, creating an experimental atmosphere through the combination of analog and digital processes. This approach allows him to move away from a literal representation of space, giving emotion and texture a fundamental role within the image.
His perspective stems from a reflection on the different ways of observing and representing reality, paying special attention to those everyday phenomena that often go unnoticed. Through photography, he seeks to offer a new interpretation of these phenomena and give them a voice of their own within the language of photography.
Travel and personal experiences are also part of his creative process. Each destination becomes an opportunity to observe and discover new ways in which people, spaces, and cultures relate to one another, exploring the contrasts and connections that exist between them.
He currently continues to develop his work in Barcelona, where he works on personal projects and continues to build his own visual language.
Project
For the past couple of years, I have sought to capture, during my travels, a personal interpretation of space through analog photography and the use of experimental film. This process has allowed me to discover unconventional images through situations, gestures, and fragments that might otherwise go unnoticed.
I’m interested in exploring a city’s public spaces through everyday elements and different perspectives that allow me to reconstruct the identity I might form of each place based on reflections and overlaps in the composition.
This enables me to weave together interpersonal connections in which the distance between one city and another seems to shrink. The unknown becomes familiar and establishes a personal perspective and a consistent visual language, building a collection of fragments belonging to a series that is still under construction and remains in constant flux.
I want to continue expanding this memory that I encounter through the lens, keeping the project open-ended and continually exploring new ways of seeing, interpreting, and building this personal archive.
