April 2023
Storm Clouds - Dolomitas, Italy. 2018
Silver gelatin print · Limited edition to 30 prints of 10¼ x 10¼ in.
"There is no spring for us,
just the cool wind before the storm."
Conan The Barbarian, 1982
(Dialogue extracted from the film)
There are people who do not know peace or rest. People in constant search of a new horizon to reach and a new battle to fight. They are like moving water; if they stop, they become contaminated. I discovered a while ago that the secret of happiness for them is not in reaching their goals, but in pursuing them without a break, reach them, and start the path to a new ones quickly. They are warriors who enjoy preparing for battle, and their greatest misfortune is to return to the peace of their homes.
*****
I took the photograph that heads this email in June 2018, in the Dolomites of Auronzo, Italy. It was about 5 or 6 pm when we arrived to the shelter where we would sleep that night. There were still many hours of daylight, and the aproaching clouds from behind the peaks in front of us, predicted an inminent storm. I placed my Hasselblad on the tripod and framed the scene. I had to hurry to measure the light with my lighmeter, since the big cloud was moving quickly, swallowing the mountains. It was a backlight scene, with the sun just above the clouds, and its rays going right through them. The contrast was terrible, and I had to expose the film in the way that, in the development, I was able to compensate it. I adjusted the camera quickly and taken two photographs. This was the first. In the second photograph, the light was gone. Before I was able to put the camera in the bag, it began to rain hard.
The final negative was full of details, but it was necessary a hard darkroom work to make a print that conveyed what I felt when I saw that cloud. The final print took me three days of work. This is the final result.
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