Studio visit: Pedro Correa

Melancholy, jubilation, awe, stillness… Photographer Pedro Correa pieces together the spirit of a global, nameless, and placeless city from inspired fragments. Impression, ville levante!

Small figurines that bear witness to his fascination with comic strips, a framed set of persos by Denis Meyers demonstrating his love for urban art, and on the table, large sheets of paper with blow-ups of his photos that intensify the veil that the city sometimes shrouds around itself… Add to that some stacks of books on the floor, a desk, two computer screens showing pictures from his archive, and a number of pieces from the Urban Impressions series leaning against the wall in anticipation of his exhibition at the Accessible Art Fair and Pedro Correa’s attic studio looks like it is already buzzing with more life than you might expect, given that he only moved in here one week ago. “This is the first room we sorted out. The rest of the apartment is full of boxes. We’ve still got a lot of work to do, but you are very welcome,” the artist from Madrid laughs.

After peregrinations in Spain and France, he and his parents moved to Brussels and he stayed put. “When my parents returned to Spain, I decided to stay here. I was just finishing my studies in oil painting and comic strip at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, and I had my whole life here. I’m pretty glad that I did so, because Brussels is going through a very interesting period for art and culture – for the time being at least. Brussels has a great critical mass. It’s not too big, it’s not too small, but it has so much going on. In Spain nowadays, art is considered a luxury. The country is slowly recovering, but it has had some very tough years. People shifted their focus to their very basic needs, things they need to survive. The problem was that governments shifted their focus too, but instead of compensating for what was lost, they invested in things we don’t really need. It’s something that touches me, perhaps because I’m Spanish, perhaps because my father, who is a teacher, always fought for the rights of those who are not on top of the food chain. As an artist, I think that’s a point of view to cherish. I like to put the spotlight on things that go unnoticed or that are taken for granted. Things I think shouldn’t be ignored. My series Home of Art, for example, is a tribute to museum attendants, the people who work there, looking lonely, almost invisible, while they are so important. They’re guarding art, they’re guarding what makes us human.”

A female guard appears in profile behind a doorframe in an almost perfect choreography; a man nearly disappears in the concrete mass that surrounds him. These are not poses, but highly photogenic snapshots of reality. “That’s right, I never ask people to pose. I think that imposes a kind of honesty on the work. But especially for this series, it meant that I had to be like a hunter and take the right picture at the right time without being noticed. That is a bit uncomfortable but at the same time quite thrilling.” Reality conceived of as wild nature that is not tamed by the photographer, but depicted as it truly is. “I don’t Photoshop my images. I use levels and I do post-process my photographs, but I never erase parts, detour, copy-paste, or add layers. Those layers are already in the image: I work a lot with reflection and superimposition, but using reality itself, things that are there, that exist, like shades, reflections, grain, dust, the texture in general. Again, the things that often go unnoticed.”

It is a stubborn vestige of his studies in oil painting, a sensibility for the painterly method, for the different layers and the evocative power of light that he inherited from his mother, who is also a painter. Only one small painting remains from his time at the Academy. “One day I will start to paint again, I’m sure of that, but not now. At the moment I am still engrossed in exploring photography. That transition occurred very gradually. Photography has always been a part of my life, and at a certain point it began to take centre stage. It is like sediment; something that is inside you and which you might sometimes forget but can never lose completely. Like my love for art. I often used to go to museums with my mother, and I must admit that as a child I was sometimes bored to tears there. [Laughs] I had all these ideas about art in my head and my stomach, and when I went to school to study painting, I picked up photography, just for myself. But what really kick-started the whole thing, the seminal work that was planted in me and that showed me how to approach my love for photography, was the work of Saul Leiter. He was the closest thing to painting in photography that I could find. His work showed me that I could do both.”

A workshop with Mark Power, the Magnum photographer who famously witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall, was exactly the same kind of revelation. “He made it clear to me that now that everyone is doing photography, the only thing that will make some people better than others is what’s beyond; their project beyond photography. And that photography is never about technology. Everything is in the eye, in the training, in the project, in what you want to express.”
The attention to light, reflections – veils cast over reality – soon make clear what Pedro Correa seeks to express in his photography. “I like to underline what is not obvious, what would be worth getting a bit more attention. There’s beauty to be found everywhere, even in the things that you might consider ugly at first. And this doesn’t require the manipulation of reality. It is capturing a specific moment that is not constructed, but which is just there. To me, that can only be transmitted through impressionism, by adding feeling to the decisive moment. That way you get a story in a single image, something of a mystery. In a society where everything has to be pretty, I’m looking for beauty. Pretty is what touches the eye, while beauty touches the soul.”

That pure view of little pieces of neglected reality results in atmospheric, inspired fragments of a city, a reflection of Pedro Correa’s particular sensibility. “At a certain point in time, I was living in the Walloon-Brabant countryside. It was as if I was meant to live this calm life in the countryside, have a family, get a stable job... But I did the exact opposite. I just had to leave everything and come back to Brussels. That was kind of an epiphany for me: if I was able to leave my family, my job, go out and jump into something that I don’t know, then that must be who I am and that’s what I have to continue doing.”
Photography is, in a way, Pedro Correa’s way of attesting to the city’s attraction: “All my pictures are love songs to the city. Not any particular one, but rather the idea of a city. Photos that depict the mix of various cultures, people bumping into each other, colours, energy, things happening on every corner… A lot of people think, especially at a certain age, that the city is too noisy, too smelly, that there are too many people. This is my way of saying that they’re just not looking close enough.” Pedro Correa comes so close that names become irrelevant. “Exactly! My migration, my search, my work, and my eye have evolved beyond the surface and have moved from mere holiday pictures, where you get a clear view of what’s on show, to pictures aimed at the spirit of the global, nameless, and placeless city. It’s my perception of the city that I want to show, the feeling rather than an actual picture. Impressionism, exactly! I’m not there yet, but that’s what I long and aim for: being able to make people feel what I felt at a particular moment.”

Borough: Elsene/Ixelles
Exhibition: Accessible Art Fair, 16 > 19/10, Cercle de Lorraine, place Poelaertplein 6, Brussel/Bruxelles, www.accessibleartfair.com
Info: www.pedrocorreaphoto.com / www.facebook.com/pedrocorreaphotography

Photos © Gautier Houba