The series of photography titled Here and Now, by the Mexican photographer Juan Pablo Delgado Berman deals with the phenomenon of the person’s role in the space, being at the same time interactive, by encouraging people to deal with that role. The concept of the images is very clear: they are broadly framed photographs of spaces, or landscapes, each one having a person put in that environment, without a clear context or explication of its role and the clear reason of making that particular photograph.
Ranging from more common, to unusual, the landscapes set the basic atmosphere of the image, while the observer focuses on the person shown in the space, while asking the question of context, of role: What is he or she doing there? The viewer is actually put in medias res to develop the interest toward the person in the photograph and cast her with a role of some sort.
Compositionally, Berman is crating very interesting frames. There are some examples of a very symbolic juxtaposition of the subject in space: a couple observing a pair of industrial chimneys while the smoke is coming out them, or a centrally placed subject in the conjunction of several railway tracks. Most of depicted subjects are turning their back to the viewer, or placed in semi profile position, in the way like they were not aware of the photograph taken, which is true for some of the images, because the author has made a compilation of spontaneously photographed compositions, as well as those that are staged for this exhibit- without emphasizing which is which, so the viewer must decipher that.
If one should determine the genre of the photographs, one should not put them neither under landscapes nor under portraits, because they are more like still frames of film scenes, and very cinematic, as Berman has a diploma in film and TV screenwriting. These scenes are not themselves sufficient to decipher the context, and the observer has to build his own. Such as visual stage directions, they represent a base for a film scene that is to be unfolded in the viewer’s mind and be continued here and now.
Aleksandar Stojanovic
Art Historian and Assistant Curator in KC Grad