Photography is entirely intuitive for me. I was not a visual arts major and do not even know the mechanics of the camera. I don’t direct the process and hardly ever do any tweaking to the images. When I tell people that I am a photographer, they ask me where my “real” camera is.
I respond that the iPhone is my real camera. In the words of Kandinsky, “I don’t choose form consciously. It chooses itself within me.”
As someone who’s always been interested in poetry, for most of my life I dreamed of being a writer. Yet during a very rough patch, I instinctively turned to photography. I started paying attention to things that go unnoticed. At first, I was especially drawn to photographing abandoned objects and street photography. I then also became interested in portraiture, still life, abstraction, typewriter and text art and recently sculpture.
In September 2015, my work was first shown at the Bake House Art Complex in Miami. Shortly after, another photo was shown at Art on 30th in San Diego, followed by four others at Site-Brooklyn in December of that year. In June 2016, two others were exhibited in Colorado galleries and in August and September two others were shown at Darkroom Gallery in Vermont. In addition, three others were exhibited at BWAC where one was awarded a third place award of honorable mention.
In 2017, exhibitions included another Colorado gallery and the Martin County Arts Council of Florida.
At the start of this year 2018, I was very honored to have my work exhibited at West Palm Beach Continuum Arts where one of my photos was sold to a collector.
Having worked as a teacher for 25 years, it had never entered my mind that I’d be pursuing an artistic career. It truly was a hidden ability all of my life until a few years ago. And honestly, I owe its discovery to the iPhone.
BARBARA REDONDO
