PHOTOGRAPHER RAFAEL TRAPIELLO
Rafael Trapiello
Photographer · Madrid, Spain
Photography that leans toward poetry, and away from the documentary cliche.
Why this conversation
Rafael Trapiello trained as a civil engineer before he ever called himself a photographer, and you can feel that double life in the work: the precision of someone who understands terrain, and the patience of someone who has learned to wait for silence. His pictures lean toward poetry rather than reportage. I wanted to talk to him because so few photographers working with land and memory will admit how much of the work is simply staying quiet long enough to actually see.
The work
Rafael Trapiello was born in Madrid in 1980. He finished a degree in Civil Engineering and worked as an engineer before becoming a professional photographer in 2006. His work circles social and territorial questions, and the deeper subjects underneath them: time, memory, and what a place quietly holds. He has published several books, most recently Todos los Tiempos, and shown his work in Spain and abroad, including the Spanish Pavilion of the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg in 2015 and 2019, and Lianzhou Foto in China in 2017. He is represented by Arniches 26 Gallery.
Other themes appeared again and again: life, death, love, beauty and time.
The conversation
Tell us about your greatest inspirations or influences.
I have always found inspiration in artists from all fields, not just photographers. Painters, sculptors, writers and poets. But so as not to give an endless list, here are a few photographers who have been essential to me in recent years. Juan Manuel Castro Prieto, my mentor since I began. Graciela Iturbide, whose work explores death. Sally Mann and Bryan Schutmaat, who explore the relationship between land and people. And two Japanese photographers very close to Zen, Rinko Kawauchi and Masao Yamamoto.
How does technology affect your creativity?
There is a very clear consequence in how we consume images today. Vertical formats have gained weight against horizontal ones, simply because the screens of our phones are vertical. So I am taking many more vertical photographs than ever, and I think more vertically now. I do not see it as negative, but as a natural evolution. The natural framing of photography does not have to be horizontal, even for a landscape. The traditional Western representation of landscape is essentially horizontal, and in the end I think social media is changing how we think about images, and making photography more inclusive across cultures.
We would love to hear more about your creative process.
My process changes a lot depending on the project. In documentary work I choose the subject, then spend time researching and reading. Because that work is so tied to land, I also use virtual terrain tools like Google Earth and Street View to find and locate the places I am interested in, which saves a lot of time. When I work on something closer to a personal diary, the process is different. First comes a period of intuitive, almost visceral photography. Then a period of reflection, where the recurring themes reveal themselves. And finally a period of working consciously on what has emerged. Todos los Tiempos is a good example. In 2016, when my daughter was born, I started a kind of photo diary. I thought it would be about fatherhood, but reviewing it years later I saw other themes appearing again and again: life, death, love, beauty and time. Once I understood that, I worked toward those to complete it.
How did the pandemic affect your creativity or work?
The pandemic let me set aside my documentary projects for a while and focus on the fatherhood work. We were lucky to spend lockdown in a family country house where we could walk every day. I was connected with nature more intensely than ever, and I think that has clearly shaped my most recent photography.
What does wellbeing mean to you?
For me wellbeing is closely tied to silence, which is increasingly scarce. Perhaps that is why I became a photographer, since it is a discipline that demands solitude and silence. My need to return to nature lately also comes from wanting to escape the noise of contemporary life and find peace.
Wellbeing is closely tied to silence, something that is increasingly scarce.
Thank you, Rafael.
