The Sad Clown

This series is the first work resulting from research into the concepts of Quantum Photography® and evolves from an almost photo-realistic rendering of a very classical portrait to a resolutely pictorial rendering of the same portrait, ending up almost in pure abstraction where only the silhouette of the model is still perceptible.

This progressive development from the photograhic to the pictorial is one of the important characteristics of Quantum Photography®. Each of the pictures presents, in varying proportions, realistic textures of the model’s skin until it reaches its completely abstract metamorphosis, with the more pixelated textures that characterize digital images, but also with color patches or color shadings and transparencies of a great smoothness that are not normally found in traditional photography or in painting.

Certain effects can evoke well-known techniques like solarization, discovered by Man Ray (although in color here), or artists’ works like Francis Bacon. However, the techniques used here, which are solely based on global manipulations of digital images without resorting to local adjustments, are altogether different. They actually fall within a photographic-type creative process in which the artist selects images instead of creating them with his hand using paint and brushes.