TITLE: Hidden Humanity

The part that I am most interested is that side of conscience we cannot control and that can get the best/worst of us in many situations: sadness, love, depression. I think that conscience defines us as species, but it also makes us unknown to ourselves. In my case, there are aspects of myself that I don’t want to look further. “Hidden Humanity” is a look at those aspects that shape our consciousness and allow us to confront ourselves and our social reality...

We are shadows and lights, we are love and hatred, happiness and sadness. But we are controlled by what surrounds us, by the political power. Who wants people with different ideas in a homogenous society? From a social point of view, it makes sense: we look for that unique thought, the debate of the absurd.

It’s always been said that you can see the reflection of the soul in people's eyes but in this series, I try to leave them out to raise the tension of the scene. A hand over your eyes is an effective way to strip away our most precious sense, a symbology of what society does with us: Don’t look, don’t think, don’t reason, be happy. It is also a way of protecting ourselves from the cruelty that surrounds us.

AUTHOR: Alberto Ros (Spain)

My specialty is wet plate collodion, an early photographic process that changed the medium in the mid 1900´s.
I always draw my photographs first, it is essential for me. I really don’t know how I get those images in my brain but when it comes out, I draw them in my notebook and then I try to replicate it in my photography. Also, I need to do it because shooting 20x20 inch tintypes is hard and expensive so I can only do one-two shots, no more. If I don’t like the image at the second shot, I forget it. In this process, light is essential to create that scenic tension. I like the darkness that invades the photographs contrasting with lights that highlight certain details.