Tales Of A City VII, Summer Of 2019
By Seigar
Every summer I visit Weston-super-Mare that is the town of my love. Weston is a very photogenic coast town near Bristol and Cardiff in Somerset, England. I always enjoy my days there and its scenery inspires me. Nobody knows I sometimes fantasize about what my partner’s childhood and teen years were like around the area. I feel a great tenderness when I explore this town because of that fantasy. I usually do these walks on my own because my love is working, so my imagination just flies. My summers used to be quite different, I’m from La Palma, one of the seven Canary Islands, in Spain. There, I would spend the whole hot summer in a black sand beach near home, so exploring Weston becomes an exotic experience because the landscape is unusual for me. I never get bored in Weston. These photos show my hike to Brean Down from my mother in law’s place. I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I say that I feel mesmerized by this walk every time I do it and I guess that is what the photos show.
I have been visiting the UK for an ongoing photo-narrative project entitled “Tales of a City” since 2005. This set also belongs to this long term research about the British identity, these personal photos belong to the seventh tales. This series was selected and finished during my lockdown in Tenerife due to the corona virus, while the world is doing the picture of what is happening, my heart, and my mind told me that I should work on my old stuff and find some beauty. I’ve found my refuge in these good memories.
Seigar is a philologist in English, a high school teacher, and a curious photographer based in Tenerife. He is a fetishist for reflections, saturated colors, details and religious icons. He feels passion for pop culture that shows in his series. He considers himself a travel and street photographer. His aim as an artist is to tell tales with his camera, to capture moments but trying to give them a new frame and perspective. Travelling is his inspiration. However, he tries to show more than mere postcards from his visits, creating a continuous conceptual line story from his trips.
The details and subject matters come to his camera once and once again, almost becoming an obsession. His three most ambitious projects so far are his “Plastic People”, a study on anthropology and sociology that focuses on the humanization of the mannequins he finds in the shop windows all over the world, “Response to Ceal Floyer for the Summer Exhibition” a conceptual work that understands art as a form of communication, and his “Tales of a city”, an ongoing urban photo-narrative project taken in London.
He is a self-taught visual artist, though he has also done a two years course in advanced photography and one in cinema and television. He usually covers public events with his camera showing his interest for social documentation. He has participated in several exhibitions: FotoNoviembre TEA, TenDíez, Círculo de Bellas Artes, Phe Gallery, Instituto de Estudios Hispánicos, Espacio Cultural Castillo de San Felipe, ULL Rafael Ramos García International Photography Awards, Tank Festival, Sala Fleming Art Gallery, Loosen Art Gallery in Rome, Haze Gallery in Berlin, and others; and his works have also been featured in international publications: Blanc Magazine, PhotoVogue, Dodho Magazine, Semi Magazine, Latent Image Magazine and others. He writes for The Cultural Magazine (Spain) about photography and for Memoir Mixtapes (Los Angeles) about music.
He has collaborated with VICE Spain, WAG1 Magazine (text and photography for both). Lately, he has been experimenting with the video form, he has directed a short film entitled “Víctor (1997)” and also a video art piece named “Hot Summer, based on true fantasies”. His last interest is documenting social issues related to identity, in search of everything that defines people (hashtags and labels). Recently, he has received the Rafael Ramos García International Photography Award for his photo “Afternoon in the lake”.
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