Today we’d like to introduce you to Rafael Guillen.
Hi Rafael, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
My path has been very interesting in its construction because in the same high school I met my life partner Claudia, today my wife and mother of our only daughter Emiliana, with her and her family, I managed to get in touch with the culture and the development of a critical judgment towards music, painting, poetry, literature, popular art, and photography.
There I met my first teacher, who taught me the photographic laboratory and my first contacts with the great masters of photography (Sebastian Salgado, Ansel Adams, Walker Evans, Paolo Gasparini, Ricardo Razetti, Don Alfredo Boulton) I am referring to Anthony Russell, Jamaican-Venezuelan photographer, who planted in me that desire to express myself and taught me that the image could help me.
Then my passage through art school at the Central University of Venezuela, with professors such as José Ignacio Cabrujas, María Teresa Boulton, José Balza, Cristianne Dimitriades, and definitely my friendship in the late ’80s with the great master Luis Brito, who brought me closer to the visual fact, to the understanding of visual culture, to the education of the eye, to learning to see through the viewfinder, and with conversations, working together and meeting other masters such as Nelson Garrido, Ricardo Armas, Antolin Sánchez, Jorge Vall and so many others who have contributed to my formation and to the foundation of this path that I walk today. The last 10 years I worked for the Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez as his photographer in the Articruz workshop, a very special period in knowledge and life experiences with this great artist and his family.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The path of my life has been really very smooth except for the need to leave my country Venezuela and especially my city Barquisimeto, that altered my creative process because it was like a very strong jolt and pushed me to reinvent myself not once but many more.
That’s why my work is linked to a past that has to do with my childhood memories, my city, my family, and my loves. I always tell people when they ask me where are you from? I answer, loud, clear, and intelligible, “I’m from Barquisimeto”.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I do not recognize myself as an artist, it would be very pretentious on my part, I am a creator in formation, who still develops, day by day, my language and my expression. I believe that an artist is one who has been consecrated and that is given by the years and ratified by a language that identifies and has a personal stamp. Besides, I believe that I am still working towards that goal.
I define myself as a being who believes in the human being, so I don’t care about color, religion, sex, or race, I care about you because you are human, that alone is enough for me. I am interested in documentary themes that have to do with poverty, religiosity or beliefs, the autochthonous, the customs, in short, everything that encloses the relationships between human beings. I am interested in being informed because I believe that only culture and education will save the planet. I like music and poetry as a wonderful expression of man’s sensibility.
I use photography as a means to express myself.
How do you define success?
Success consists in getting what you want. Happiness, in enjoying what you get, success is confused with the material, but it is not so, I consider myself successful at the time when my happiness is to be well with those around me are!!! The definition of success is personal
Contact Info:
- Website: https://rafaelguillen.photoshelter.com/archive
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rafaelguillen/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rafaelguillenfoto
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/rafaelguillen
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLdTSzj1p-2dGrf9v3qkCHw
- Other: https://linktr.ee/rrgg
Image Credits
Headshot: @andrésmanner
