Jordi Socías, The Picture Tamer
Francis Ford Coppola sprawls in a wicker chair. Roman Polanski looks defiantly at the camera. A young Penélope Cruz is pensive, perhaps worried about her future as an actress. Or perhaps, she is simply tired. These are some of the situations portrayed by the Spanish photographer Jordi Socías for the Maremágnum exhibit at the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington DC
Most of the characters do not need a presentation. Many of them share their lives with lights and cameras. Others rub shoulders with literature or politics. Socías creates special moments in a scene without pretense where only he makes the rules: listen to the subjects, find the direction of their look and never show them the pictures “freshly taken.”
One of the most curious pics is one of Dalí with an impetuous look. After a difficult meeting in the painter’s house in Port Lligat (Girona) the conceited artist made the photographer wait “till the right moment appeared”. When a gust of the Tramontana wind raised Dalí’s whisker in a comic stance, Socías took advantage of this magical moment of surprise. This portrait of the open-eyed genius has since traveled all around the world.
In Maremágnum we also contemplate some portraits of unknown people in a time when everything wasn’t yet invented in Spain: people having fun in fairs or protesting in demonstrations.
Self-taught, this photographer who has been the graphic editor of the magazine of El País, began his career by chance after working as a watch salesman. Always using “suggestion” as a motto (even for his half-naked self-portrait after a serious heart operation), he is only missing a single portrait: the one of Clint Eastwood. It will come.
The photos in Maremágnum suggest intimate moments and real atmospheres. Without aesthetic tricks, Jordi Socías shows the reality of some “celebrities” who, like him, are self-made men and women, talented people living as part of a social circus. Thanks to the ability of transforming a portrait into a huge event, all these people, rich or poor famous or not, appear for a moment as the stars of the show, the real ringmasters.
—Berta Corredor
Maremágnum is at the Mexican Cultural Institute in DC through Feb 4, 2012.
Next stops: Instituto Cervantes New York (Feb 23 - March 23, 2012) and Instituto Cervantes Chicago (May 1 - July 5, 2012).
