HUMAN CONNECTION

NATALIA MUÑOZ

// Natàlia Muñoz is an analog photographer from Barcelona, Spain. What started as a hobby has become like therapy for her. Photography helps her to slow down, to relax, to forget about her worries and focus on the beauty around her. She shared one of her projects called “Human connection”.

Natalia´s photography mainly depicts daily scenes, landscapes and nature, and she enjoys the creativity of telling new stories through double exposures. She finds that using analog film can be versatile and give one the freedom to experiment. “My new goals are to push my creativity more with double exposures and experimenting with film soups,” she says.

“Photography is the story I fail to put into words.”

Destin Sparks

(Australian landscape photographer)

What draws you to the arts?

“Photography is a therapy to me and the same happens to me when I go to see an exhibition of photography or paintings, even music. Art has the capacity of absorbing me, my mind is totally focused on that: the patterns, the colors, the lines or geometry, the rhythm…it’s comforting to not think of anything else. Arts comforts me, it is like a warm hug.”

What do you like best about artful photography such as the images you have shared with us?

“The double exposure of the eye I believe is something that catches people´s attention. Overall, double exposures are one of the things I enjoy the most, the process requires one to think of a story, to create something that makes sense.”

“Human Connection” is a series of double exposures reflecting the way humans connect with nature or their surroundings, looking for calm moments. In Natalia´s photography there is always a common link: nature or the human connection with nature, cosmos, or earth. She likes playing with humans and organic lines in her works to reflect that.

“When I use someone for a double exposure in that sense it’s my way to reflect the need of the subject to connect with their surroundings, to be capable of finding calm in the sea, for instance, to connect with the soul of the city, its beauty, its people in a peaceful way. My subject looks relaxed, that’s what I want to transmit. In another picture you see a hand touching the stars, this is a double exposure work combined with astrophotography (a long exposure of stars). Again it reflects the human connection with nature, cosmos, and life. You can feel the same with human elements combined with organic lines. The branches of the trees are filling the human silhouettes like veins. These are humans filled with nature through their veins,” she explains.

“I even represented the connection of humans with night life. We all sometimes feel that connection with the night, the lights of the cars, the neons, the scent of the air, and sometimes the silence, in short, that mysterious atmosphere of the night.”To that aim she shot a close up of a human eye with a macro lens, and then combined it with a picture of one of the streets in Barcelona to simulate a reflection on it of a night scene. “It was quite difficult to achieve the effect I wanted but in the end I think that looks quite well. This is what I reflect with my works: human connection.”

Click on the photos to see a larger image. Some images may be cropped for layout.