JOAQUIN MONTESINOS Love for Senegal

It is now well known that Africa is a fascinating and, at the same time, a contrasting continent. Its thousand faces of everyday life appear to us of another "reality" when we compare them to those of our cosmopolitan society. And yet, we are attracted to it, almost as if in that "reality" we find the roots of our past...

I would call it a contradictory love relationship, but still a "love" relationship.

This introduction is to present the artist photographer JOAQUIN MONTESINOS, an artist of Spanish nationality.

Joaquin has lived this love especially with Senegal. His travels and stays in this wonderful "country" have become, through his photos, a tool for declaring his love. His aerial views, in search of a different vision, "from above", are transformed into abstract views of contemporary art.

The artist does not limit himself to photographing a landscape, but seeks the moment, the foreshortening, the detail that transforms the real world into the surreal.

Moreover, there is a continuous search for chromatic balance of the representations in the photographic interpretation of the artist.

Africa wants to represent it in all its contrasting "splendor", not only photographing it but living it, right where this dusty dazzle originates.

His photographic works are fixing everyday life, in all its forms and it is for this reason that they become "true". There is no "photographic manipulation" looking for special or constructed effects.

Joaquin's photos of Senegal are the truth of that life and of himself.

The artist also immortalized Senegal in black and white, a classic for a photographer. But even in that dimension of chiaroscuro the "dusty blunder" appears to our eyes.

In any way, we place ourselves as spectators of his works, our sensitivity is stimulated.

A simple reality able to involve us almost as if we were living it.

Talking to Joaquin, you are "overwhelmed" by his electrifying energy, as his words describing life in Senegal and his own experience in that reality, declare a deep feeling, the face changes, we are faced with a lover who speaks of his beloved.

Shiny eyes testify to the truth! And we find this brightness in his images! This article presents just a few of the hundreds of photos that Joaquin hhas immortalized in Senegal.

It should be emphasized that the artist, in addition to his love for Senegal, has edited various photography catalogs dedicated to the city of Grasse, day and night, in color and black and white, managing also on this occasion to capture glimpses and details that give a real identity of this famous world capital of perfume.

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