Pablo Juliá (Cádiz, 1949) has been taking photos since he was 15 years old. He was a photographer for the PSOE in the 1970s, later a photojournalist and graphic editor for EL PAÍS, to later direct the Centro Andaluz de Fotografía for a decade. the anthology Photography and Word (Sílex Editorial) he recovers his work with photo captions built from his memory.
Ask. How do you see the current photograph?
Answer. The photographs do not remain. Before you had the magazine Life and the photos of Kennedy’s death or Marilyn’s legs lasted for months. Now on your screen you see a plane falling and half a second later you go to Pamela Anderson’s tits. Photography was essence, pure Parmenides; now it is Heraclitian, where everything flows and nothing remains.
Q. What should someone who starts in this Heraclitian photograph do?
R. Forget about so much technique and so much schoolitis. Don’t be afraid of being wrong. And return to analog photography as a base because, since it is not immediate, it teaches you to reflect.
Q. When did you realize you had your own look?
R. We were so few photographers that you had to educate yourself. I was influenced by the cinema nouvelle vague and Antonioni, especially blow up. Based on trial and error you build your look.
Q. If I hadn’t been a photographer?
R.. Don’t know. In Cádiz they called me El Peliculero because I liked movies. I was an actor, but you had to dedicate a lot of time. And I studied History… I’ve touched so many styles!
Felipe González gave me good advice: “You are not good for politics. Dedicate yourself to photography.”
Q. And yet, with a camera from the age of 15…
R. And always with a camera on top, looking for geometry. Because what is photography if not geometry?
P. And what role does light play?
R.. Being a photojournalist, I could rarely modify the light. I relied on what I had: geometry. For me photography is more geometry than light.
Q. Artist or photojournalist?
R. I have always had a social conscience. I wanted my photos to change the world. They don’t change anything. At first you have a messianic vision of life that ends in disappointment. You turn it around and go on to an ironic and vitalist speech. You are no longer a photojournalist: simply a photographer.
Q. Do we seek to transcend with photography?
R.. I no longer seek to transcend. We photographers are exhibitionists and the photo is our nude. And when you don’t have a newspaper to publish, you find a solution to that craving on the networks.
P. Have you stopped showing any photographs?
R. I took photos that I never showed because they went against my principles.
Q. And there are many photos that you have taken that could not be published today
R. We self-censor. We are invaded by a wave of neoconservatism that affects the entire society.
Q. Your first photos that came out were political photos for the PSOE in the 70s… What was that period like?
R. I was a member of the PSOE with my camera. I was a socialist, I still am without a card, but I stopped being a soldier when Franco died. Felipe González gave me some good advice: “Look, man, you are useless for politics. Dedicate yourself to the only thing you half know, which is photography. Here you have to distribute the game and you don’t know, because you are a fundamentalist of yours ”. I listened to him.
Q. Married to Isabel Pozuelo, deputy for 20 years of the PSOE. How was the coexistence?
R.. The confrontation was very clear. She, for example, had the anti-smoking law and I smoked. “Man, how are you going to come with me smoking a cigar”, she told me “Well, I’m going to continue smoking, Isa!”. She posted things that bothered him. “Well, you’ll know”, she blurted out to me. My original friends, like Felipe or Manolo Chaves, never blamed my photos. The right yes. Javier Arenas reproached me for removing Aznar with my intentions. He said: “Man, Pablo, hell, we’re friends.” That was never told to me by those who were really my friends.
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