Silhouette Photography
| Last Updated: October 7, 2014
Superb Street Photography By Christian Luna
In this showcase series we feature the superb street photography of Christian Luna.
Christian told us how he got started in photography:
I got my first reflex camera when I was 13 and started learning, by myself, how to photograph and discovering the technique. Later, I found black and white photography and the lab. I fell in love with the possibilities and with the lab itself. I would spend hours developing my own photos.
At the age of 19, I enrolled on an image and sound degree and started working as a photographer’s assistant. In 2002, I moved to Lisbon and enrolled in Cenjor, a journalism school where i met a journalist who would invite me to make a series of photo reports in Mozambique that would later be published in the press. I am 35 years old and currently live in Madrid and juggle my work in television with photography.
Can you tell us a little more about this series?
This series includes photos I took throughout the places I’ve been, some digital, some analogic. For the past 12 years I’ve been living in Lavapies, a very multicultural neighbourhood. Whether in Portugal or Spain I’ve always elected these kind of places to live in.
Some of these photos were taken in places where I live, others were taken on trips to home countries of my fellow neighbours. I’m interested in shape’s contrasts, shadows, light, people, their contours and connections. To photograph different cultures is to immortalise contrasts.
I love the small detail found in the life of the streets. I like to look without being seen but also to look straight at something and to document. Emotions, social status and economic situations are protagonists in my photos. I try to correlate human condition with daily life.
My aim is to show that each own’s context determines one’s way of living. All of this happens behind the scenes. When we are born the spaces are already there, we have to adapt without thinking that we could have been born somewhere else.
What equipment did you use for this series?
For this series several cameras have been used: a Nikon FM3A with manual lenses, a Leica D-Lux 4 as a point and shoot, and a Nikon D700 with 2.8 lenses.
To develop I used Adobe Lightroom since it delivers a closer to dark room experience. To be honest, until mid 2006 I had very little use for digital processing and it was through lightroom that I realised I could bring back some techniques I used to apply in the lab. Most of my work is in black and White, a style I’ve always been in love with.
You can see more Christian’s work via christianlunaphoto.com and Flickr, or connect with him via Facebook or Twitter.
Photophique has express permission to publish these images and Christian Luna retains full copyright to all photographs featured in this showcase series.
