I could not say exactly when all of this began. I have always loved nature, going into the mountains, travelling and discovering new places. Photography began as a way of bringing something back from those journeys, but over the years it came to occupy a place in my life I had never imagined.
I have spent much of my life working in a field that has little to do with art. I am an engineer; I like technology, numbers and understanding how things work. Perhaps that is why photography interests me so much. There is something in it that I cannot resolve through logic, no matter how hard I try.
I love mountains. Very much. I like walking through them, feeling the cold, the wind and the fatigue. I even enjoy those days when things go wrong, when plans have to change or I return without the photograph I had in mind. Though I must admit I do not always enjoy it quite so much at the time.
I have been fortunate enough to visit extraordinary places. Antarctica, for example, changed the way I look. Reaching it by sailboat after crossing the Drake Passage and finding myself before those enormous walls of ice is difficult to put into words. And although I made many photographs, there are things about that journey that no image can tell.
Over time, I have also begun to look differently at my own photographs. Some that seemed extraordinary to me years ago now say very little. Others that I almost discarded then interest me much more today. I suppose we change, and so does the way we look.
I have never been particularly interested in photographing a place simply to prove I was there. What matters to me is what happens when I stand before it. Sometimes it is the light, sometimes a shape, a shadow or something I cannot even identify at that moment. I can spend a long time searching for how to make a photograph and end up making none at all.
I have also become more conscious of what I am seeing. When I photograph a glacier, for example, I find it hard to separate its beauty from the possibility that one day it may no longer be there. I do not want to turn every photograph into an accusation, but it would not feel honest to ignore what is happening before my eyes.
I am not entirely sure where my photography will go in the coming years. I have learned to distrust certainties a little, especially my own. I still make mistakes, I still make photographs I later dislike and, from time to time, I make one that brings me enormous joy.
There is one thing that, fortunately, has not changed. I can spend hours before a landscape, searching for a composition, waiting for the light to change or trying to understand what caught my attention. Sometimes I end up making a photograph I like. At other times, I simply enjoy having been there. And I admit that I still feel excited when I see an image on the camera screen that resembles what I had imagined.
At 63, I still become as excited as a child by the possibility of making a good photograph.
And for me, that is already quite a lot.
GVIVANCO