“Photography keeps me alert,” writes Rafael Arocha by way of introduction to his project entitled Midnight. “The photographic process allows me to critically and creatively understand, and get closer to different situations, feelings and people, learning more about my own thoughts and inner emotions. I believe this process allows the photographer to discover and connect with his/her obsessions, doubts, intellect and memory.”
With more than a whiff of Anders Petersen, this imagery plumbs the heart of grimness. Alive to the presence of human flesh, it looks at the relationship between instinct and desire, where night time is the stage set on which courtship becomes ritualistic. Filtered through his uncompromising lens are scenes, incidents and gestures that become transformed into things of profound and often awkward beauty.
“Midnight refers to a fleeting moment,” Arocha goes on to explain, “a line that divides one moment in time from another. It is then that a transformation happens, a metamorphosis, and an instinctive drive, from deep within, offers us the opportunity to show ourselves as less ordinary. Things happen, sometimes unnoticed, which reflect our own obsessions or fantasies. Non-verbal codes are used to communicate, and once interpreted, they become intimate longing and desire.”
Rafael Arocha was born in 1978, in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Click here to view more work from the series. To learn about his practice visit www.rafaelarocha.com