Photographer Fernando Delgado at home
Composition No.K3-2006, by Fernando Delgado
Signpost featured artist of the month
Fernando Delgado: “A serious artist”
—BEN FORGEY
Photographer Fernando Delgado is a refined gentleman of great taste.
His photographs— called “sumptuous ... classical and
sexy” by THE magazine— delve into the realm of the senses.
Overtly studies of light, texture, shape, and form, they also evoke
the sound of fingertips brushing against the porcelain vases that
are the subject matter, the warmth of sun on skin and the tastes
and smells of a sybarite's afternoon.
Though he is new to image making himself, he has spent his whole
professional life as an art director in New York, working with the
very best creative minds in every media. The lessons he took from
them and from his undergraduate days at Parsons School of Design
allowed him to emerge as a full-fledged artist. His work on Madison
Avenue also taught him that simplicity and directness are key ingredients
to successful communication.
“How can I edit something and still reveal the essence of
what I am trying to say,” Delgado muses, in a beautiful tenor
voice soaked in the rum-sugar accent of his original home, Cuba.
“There is a quote on the wall of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum
which says that details (to her) were almost confusing ... That
the role of the artist is to distill the essence ... That was very
meaningful to me.”
Delgado shot his first photograph—for his Christmas card—while
still living in New York, two years ago. The simple word “peace”
was embossed in the border. The success of the image encouraged
him to continue arranging and shooting his beloved collection of
forties’ and fifties’ vases even after his move to Placitas.
Their sensuous curves and eggshell finishes capture the natural
light streaming in through windows in New York and New Mexico—differently,
but with equal strength. He has made now three series, “White”,
then “Black,” and now “Color.” The digital
prints on archival rag paper (twenty-three by thirty inches) seem
to breathe the richness of light and shadow and lovely saturated
color. The photos relate to O'Keeffe's work not only in their close-up,
pared down abstraction, but they also share the famous creaminess
of her brushwork.
Neal Benezra, the esteemed director of the San Francisco Museum
of Modern Art, chose Composition-K3 2006, from the “White”
series, for the Biennial Southwest exhibition. The show is currently
hung in the Albuquerque Museum until January 7 (see side article).
It is a true testament to the maturely developed stage of Delgado's
talents on essentially his first time out.
On a recent visit to the Placitas Holiday Sale, a neighbor introduced
Delgado to another neighbor by saying that “Fernando is a
serious artist,” about which he feels slightly embarrassed.
“It is not as though I am spending all day ....” (He
clasps his hands as if in prayer and genuflects towards one of his
prints.) But his photographs are a study or meditation on light.
His eye and attention to detail reveal a seriousness that cannot
be mistaken.
Visit www.fernandodelgadophotography.com
to see more images in color. Delgado will be discussing his work
at the Albuquerque Museum as a part of their artist lecture series
on Thursday, December 14, at 2:00 pm.
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