The Eyes

The series is made up of a dozen monochrome engravings in which various details from as many reproductions of photographs from the  J.R. Plaza Archive have been enlarged. What the artist focuses on are furtive portraits of children and women that are there only to reaffirm the act, whether reflexive or voluntary, that averted their eyes from the observation of others.

The models could have been secondary characters in a group photograph, candid actors in a snapshot, figures defined by imprecise edges; in any case, imperfect, dispensable presences in agreement with the dictates of a genre that demanded — even for amateur photographers — faces decipherable through their features and expressions. The person being photographed must, above all, be looking directly at the camera; if that is not the case, the shot is retaken.

By enlarging these faces from the fragment they occupied in the original print, by displacing them to the foreground and making them absolute masters of the frame, Iñaki Bonillas delves into the half insomniac, half drowsy dimension where photographs usually exist (in albums, for example) while they are waiting for the light and the contemplation that will lend them new life; that is why he chooses to work specifically with this series of photographs: given their spectral condition, which is made explicit or is reinforced by the fact that they are negative prints, they seem to resist against this awakening, as though they would spurn the spectacle of the world and would prefer to concentrate their attention on themselves.