Alex Corvin is a visual artist from Spain who specializes in capturing “moments observed in stillness and motion.” His monochromatic portfolio of dynamic photographs is a collection of captivating city scenes.
The artworks exist in a realm between stillness and movement, in “the space where something is felt but not fully grasped, like the way memory distorts a scene long after our eyes have turned away.” The techniques used by the artist create mirage-like images that are emotionally charged in their simplicity.
If anything could be a literal representation of a “motion picture,” it would be Corvin’s photography. Time and space do not exist within it. It refuses to admit the confinements of a camera lens. “Using slow shutter speeds and deliberate movement, I prioritize the emotional residue of a moment over its visual clarity. I’m less interested in what is seen than in what lingers as it begins to dissolve,” explains Corvin.
The best term to describe his work is perhaps “ephemerality.” It represents the transient process from now to then, a continuous depiction of ongoing moments as they develop and cease to exist, as if they never occurred. This is the kind of fluidity and impermanence that is distinguishable in both his photography and paintings. “This ambiguity,” he says, “this ‘second glance,’ feels closer to how we encounter one another: present, but never fully known, moving through each other’s periphery.”
Monochrome, ICM conceptual imagery, bleak, minimalistic landscapes, and nature-inspired visuals largely populate Corvin’s body of work. However, at the center of this grainy and distorted tapestry of the void stands the human presence, which, paradoxically and with a clever twist, hints at emotions of absence. Their shadows mark the pale, mysterious backgrounds and canvases just enough to focus on capturing a sense of their existence. “In my images, people are transient. They pass through the frame without ever fully arriving. Faces surface briefly, then recede into shadow. A figure watches from within a crowd, or perhaps it isn’t a figure at all.”
Corvin concludes that these photographs “exist somewhere between documentation and disappearance. Not fully present. Not entirely gone. The moment before. And the trace left after.”
Read our “Roots” issue in full
The new theme, born as usual from what the submitted works held in common, is “ROOTS.” Within its pages, we present the artworks, creativity, and inspiration of 60 visual artists and writers from 21 countries around the world. Their diverse voices come together around a shared exploration of the return to where one belongs, the invisible threads of tradition that shape identity, and the ongoing reconnection with nature, others, and oneself.
We’re a team of writers using our craft to spotlight art in its most honest form. RAWGUE. started as a bi-monthly editorial experiment where each issue’s theme is dictated by the submitted work, thus removing editorial bias from the equation and preserving a more raw approach. We focus on all forms of poetry: written, photographed, painted, drawn, and filmed.
