How did you come up with the idea of this project?
My journey as a photographer has always been driven by Henri Cartier Bresson’s and his classic phrase “the decisive moment”. Always searching for the spontaneity of the moment, always avoiding reconstructing or creating the story within the image, starting from a blank canvas.
In 2021, a year after the start of the pandemic and finding an affection that I did not know about the elements beyond the human figure, I looked for my own way of being able to mix the portrait and the still life, taking as a common thread a story that was important to me. This is how I came up with “eros-ism the action of loving”: the exploration as a woman and her encounter with orgasm. A word that for me was closer to the notion of utopia than to reality.
Why do you give the project name eros-ism ?
The project is based on the question: what does the word eroticism mean to me as a creative person? And what goes through my head and my body when interpreting this word?
This was not an easy task for me. Eroticism is often confused with pornography, and although I knew that I wanted to use the female figure as the surface of the story and the common thread, the importance was the connection between the two objects and the elements that for me were already stimulating. Be it from colors, textures or contrasts.
However, to understand the word eroticism, it was very important to review its etymology. This led me to the love story of Eros and Psyche, in which the connection between fantasy and reality is created from their union. Eros being the god of love in Greek mythology and Psyche, the human being with whom he falls in love, they create the earthly and divine bond that comes to be the sexual act. After reading this story, I knew that the project had to be named: Eros-Ismo, keeping the visual metaphor where I would contemplate the temporal and emotional connection towards the path to orgasm.
What was the reason for choosing these body parts?
I thought of the parts of the body as walls on my way to sexuality in order to reach the great encounter with orgasm.
Every moment in your sexual life is a mixture of noise and hate towards you, until you manage to overcome them or turn them off and enjoy.
How did you arrive at the construction of each image?
The lips, the first kiss, that moment when you touch the lips of the other, the sweet and strange moment, not really knowing what to do but willing to give your lips to the encounter.
The taste is that first meeting with the juices of pleasure, the excess or absence of saliva, understanding how far you can open your mouth and the bittersweet tastes that reach your face.
The neck, the encounter with nudity, fragility, breathing in that space that is so easy to undress but so sensitive to the slightest caress or breath, being able to recognize the perfume of the other who approaches.
The back is the balance with the intimate and your personal prejudices to your appearance. Being naked with someone different from your mirror, listening to your voices of imperfection and feeling the caresses of someone who enjoys your curves, feeling each imperfection in your mind while the hand touches you, reaching that perfect balance where the voices are silenced.
The womb – the fertility of a land covered in questions, deciphering if you are part of the statistics of the year or just an arid land where nothing grows and wondering what would happen if your body were a field of flowers and considering what you are going to be if you are who cut them or let them grow.
The vagina, the last indecipherable lock to which the greatest burden is given, to be able to reach the purest pleasure. However, the path to him has had millions of doubts, blows and prejudices from which you must free yourself in order to meet him.
CREDITS:
Model/Melodia Iglesias
@puremelodia
Photography & Art Direction/Gabriela Cravajal Olaya
@gabrielacarvajalolayaph
Make up Artists/ Laia Llop
@by.laia_mua
