Pedro Correa
Clearly influenced by his painting background (his painter mother, and his oil painting and comic art studies at the Brussels Royal Academy of Arts), his style was born by injecting the emotions of impressionism into the «decisive moment» of photography. In other words: shooting with one eye of an impressionistic painter and one eye of an urban image hunter.
In order to capture instead of creating an alternate reality, elements of the picture are never modified digitally, or images merged together.
His favorite subject remains the subtle human presence exuding out of urban landscapes, and his obsession to encapsulate enough fragile moments of fleeting urban beauty as to create with them an imaginary city where every single moment would be beautiful.
Statement
The fascination about infusing emotions into photography came after his PhD in Image Processing (at UCL University) in parallel with his studies in oil painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Art (both in Belgium). During that period Correa noticed that the image processing studies analyzed the data that was needed in order for an image to convey a specific message, whereas the impressionists where able to convey emotions while actually removing rational information and details from the reality they were seing. This juxtaposition of such opposed treatments of the image (or the translation of the world around us into an image) bread a long series of thoughts and works that culminated in the belief that by removing rational information from an image one could actually dampen brain activity and enhance the viewer’s emotions (creating a more personal experience with the artwork). This thought has never left him since.
