Pep Ventosa

Pep Ventosa

Pep Ventosa is a modern fine artist who utilizes digital technology in both taking photographs and creating fine art using Photoshop. Ventosa is considered to be a fine art digital imaging artist because of the qualities of his work and because his work is exhibited worldwide. Due to the unique nature of his work, Ventosa has caused the art world and me to see scenes or objects in new and exciting ways. Pep Ventosa was born in 1957 in Vilafranca del Penedes, which is near Barcelona, Spain ( ). Ventosa's interest in photography most likely began when he received his first camera at the age of ten years old. He later learned darkroom techniques while attending Escola d’Arts I Oficis Artístics de l’Alt Penedés; however, Ventosa taught himself to use digital photographs, Photoshop techniques, and printing. Aside from his art background, he also has a degree in Tourism Economy from the Tourism School of Sant Pol de Mar, which is located in Spain. Today, Ventosa works full time creating his works of art. He currently lives near San Francisco Bay in California and at his home in Spain, but he travels the world as he looks for new scenes to present in a different visual style. Ventosa’s works have been exhibited in the United States, Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Switzerland. Special exhibits of his work have been shown at New York’s Solomon R. Guggenhein Museum and Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art (). A permanent exhibit of Ventosa’s work is found at Sacramento’s Crocker Art Museum (). In Spain, the Palma Dotze Galeria d'Art represents him, and fine art reproductions of selected pieces of his work are published by the Winn Devon Art Group. Aside from having his work exhibited and sold around the world, Ventosa has won several awards. One of the most prestigious awards is the Silver Award and People’s Choice Award from the Px3 Prix de la Photographie Paris. He was also a finalist in the Photographer’s Forum Magazine’s 24th Annual Spring Photo Competition in 2004, and his photography book was ranked #1 on the New York Times bestseller list for photography books. In addition, some photography teachers are using his techniques as guides for their students (). A basic description of Ventosa’s work is that his works are either photographs that give the illusion of paintings or that utilize a unique mosaic technique. He creates images that allow us to have our own interpretation and to be entertained by analyzing the details. For example, in Ventosa’s photographic series called The Collective Snapshot (Image 1), he uses photos of places that we are familiar to us, but he creates a new image that is alien to some degree(). By using snapshots taken by different people and combining these photos into a composite image, he creates a different perspective of iconic landmarks in this series. These new images are more similar to the way we see these landmarks in our memories (). Ventosa best describes this new perspective when he says, “What grows is a unique new narrative space that never actually happened, where the whole has traveled mysteriously further than what the camera documented. Part memory, part imagination. Not unlike the way we see” (). Because of this hazy look and the way that the color and light of the picture capture our attention more than the actual shape of the landmark, these images have a quality very similar to the texture in watercolor paintings (). Ventosa’s series of Carousels (Image 2) also creates the same illusion of mixing painting and photography. The main difference with this series is that Ventosa photographed the carousels while they were moving and while he was walking around them. These shots allowed him to work with various 360 degree views of the carousels and the backgrounds (). The final image of each carousel is a blurred composite photo that once again makes the colors and light more striking. Ventosa’s unique mosaic technique can be most easily described as shooting fragments of a scene or object then reconstructing the puzzle pieces into a mosaic of the scene. This mosaic, however, presents details that we may have never noticed and portrays the scene as a completely new image. Ventosa’s collections of Reconstructed Works – Europe and Reconstructed Works – America contain several interesting examples of this mosaic technique and have also been recognized in the International Photography Awards. As shown in the work, “Radio City” (Image 3), the mosaic is not seamless nor is it perfect. The blocks of different colors as well as the blocks with less saturation attract your attention first. As you study these blocks, they become more interesting. You may notice the half of a woman or the one large foot in the middle of the street. The image begins to look less like a street scene and more like a work of art. In order to create his digital images, Ventosa uses very specific equipment. The following equipment was his equipment of choice as of 2006. The two cameras that he uses are the Nikon D70 and the Nikon Coolpix 995. He does not use a scanner but relies completely on the digital photographs. He uses a Dell computer with a large monitor, two internal hard drives, two external hard drives, and a portable hard drive. The color management system that he employs is the ColorVision Spyder2 PRO color calibration system and the RGB ICC Profiles from Epson for printing. Also for printing, he uses the Epson Stylus Pro 7600 that has UltraChrome pigment inks or the Epson Stylus Photo 1280. Ventosa's favorite papers are the Epson Enhanced Matte Paper and the Epson Premium Semimatte Photo Paper. Of course, as times change, so does technology; therefore, Ventosa's equipment has probably evolved along with technological advances. Ventosa begins most of his work by using fragment photography. He will take thirty to forty digital photos of different pieces of the scene. These photographs may be taken from various angles and perspectives. Ventosa then takes a blank document in Photoshop and opens each photograph as a separate layer. He next begins to reconstruct the scene like putting pieces of a puzzle together. As he joins the puzzle pieces, he does not try to make it look perfect, but he does look for natural symmetry as he overlaps each photograph. He works with Photoshop to balance "colors, textures, and [the] way images mix together"(). He mainly experiments with layers masking, blending modes, adjusting levels and combining selections or duplicated layers. Ventosa will edit each of the photographs in Photoshop so that he can feel or see something interesting. He says that he will often spend hours editing layers, which he believes is the part of the process that involves the most creativity. Ventosa will then rearrange or combine layers until he sees a natural shape for the final image. Finally, he will flatten the image, crop it to his liking, and make some minor adjustments. Ventosa believes that because so much of his editing process is experimental, it is difficult to decide when the work is completed. Despite this difficulty, Ventosa says that he "enjoy[s] the mystery of this process. You just never know what's going to happen" (). The first feature of Ventosa's work that attracted my attention was the similarity of his Carousel collection to Impressionist paintings. I have always enjoyed Impressionist paintings more than other styles, but after taking an Art Appreciation course two years ago, I was able to better understand this painting style. As I viewed different artworks during the last two years, I have often caught myself looking for similarities in modern paintings to Impressionist paintings. My first view of Ventosa's Carousel collection surprised me with its use of colors and light in a strikingly similar manner to the Impressionist style. Because of my interest in Impressionism and the unique qualities of this collection, I searched for Ventosa's other works and was equally impressed. Due to the fact that digital art is a new field, people often question if digital imaging can actually create fine art. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, fine art is defined as either a type of art that is done with the sole purpose to create beautiful things for their aesthetic value not for their commercial value or an activity that requires some type of skill. The beauty of Ventosa's works speak for themselves as qualifying as work of aesthetic value. Also, the technical intricacies of photography and Photoshop require quite a bit of skill that not everyone possesses. Because of these two facts and the fact that Ventosa's works have been exhibited worldwide, I would definitely argue that Ventosa qualifies as a fine art digital imaging artist. As I learned more about Ventosa's techniques and beliefs, Ventosa's outlook on the creation on digital fine art images made me realize that the purpose of digital photography is not just to capture the image of a moment in time or an object but to produce new visual experiences. Because of this realization, I want to learn and to experiment more with digital photography and Photoshop techniques. Perhaps, I may also one day create images that are new and intriguing.

Images

Image I
"The Statue of Liberty" from The Collective Snapshot

Image 2
"Carousel de la Belle Epoque, Paris" from In the Round - Carousels

Image 3
"Radio City" from Reconstructed Works - America