Gabriel Orozco

“Looking through the lens of the camera doesn't intensify experience. It just frames the object. It's much more intense without the camera. For me photography is like a shoebox. You put things in a box when you want to keep them, to think about them. Photography is more than a window for me; photography is more like a space that tries to capture situations. It's notational. I use the camera like drawing.”
— Gabriel Orozco


The Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco is a chameleon. His playful work is immensely varied, and includes sculpture, painting, video and photogrpahy. In the image above, Orozco makes a voided space tangible using clay, making visible the invisible. The molded shape echoes the way his fingers line up when closed, yet also implicit is how the palm, with hands closed, secretly holds the shape of a heart. The image and idea is a gesture of offering.

Below is another Orozco image that again looks at spacial relationships. Here the void itself makes the invisible visible. The void suggests the idea of a perfect fit between absense and presence, like a footprint in sand. And while you could read the image as powerful, as many of us have an urge to make a mark, I also see an implied loss...with all the missing pieces.


I love how body parts can relate to one another. It is as though we are these perfect things -- when we see how some of our parts innately fit. My images of bodies are less about voids and spaces between things, and more about borders, edges, and relationships of permimeters. Below is a very early test photo. (please forgive the grainy camera-phone image.)