We look at the camera and hope that that magical moment will protect us from death, the inescapable Known End.

This is not so at all; We are probably more aware of this exercise of immortality, of the possibility of passing on to posterity just as we like to see ourselves, and we like to be seen, once we contemplate the result. Or what is the same, once the image is revealed: once the result is visualized, we give our approval and it can be offered to the public eye.

I am focused and look through the device, I demand that you dedicate yourself exclusively to me for a moment and –click¹- I capture that gesture. Up to this point the rite has remained largely unchanged since the popularization of Kodacolor². What has taken a brutal and unexpected turn has been the part related to the development of the image, and the very end of the shot itself, which is its public demonstration – let’s call it exhibition of the result, display of the photographic image.

Although today, processing times have changed in such a way that Zeno would have to revise his famous paralogism about Achilles³. It is inaccurate to say that one of the novelties of photography in this digital age is that it has become something instantaneous, with the loss of credit and market that it has meant for the system developed by E. Land⁴. Something undeniable is the exponential growth in the capacity for image dissemination and the speed at which it is produced. So that today you can take a photo, or two dozen photos, at midday in La Mancha and within seconds this information reaches any smartphone in the neon-tinted night, there in Times Square. .

Like any change, it generates a revolution and at the same time a reaction. Let’s see: a consequence of so much progress falls on the importance of the image itself, in this way photography tends to dilute itself in its own massification. The democratization of the medium and the power it has over society can generate such a saturation of images that it does not take us long to witness the loss of credit of the snapshot: the shot, the pose and even the possibility of providing us with a passport, even if it is imposed, to immortality⁵. Is there a threat of devastating change in the face of the phenomenon imposed in these few 175 years of photography’s life, from the kalotype to the Instagram? Without an answer, the fact is that this paradox is not completely fulfilled today. It’s a disturbing future, nothing more than a fun divination exercise.

Fernando Vallesa wants to expose the viewer to the experience of viewing a series of portraits, with almost identical external characteristics; identical light, similar dimensions, identical technique – black and white. Just a few small changes in the model’s gesture show that they are not the same photo that differs from each other in subtle variations. For his investigation, the artist will use two different supports; chemical technology for some and digital technology for others.

¹ Click; Digital cameras and smartphones incorporate this sound that is generated digitally as an acoustic reference for taking photographs. Its origin comes from mechanical shutters, which were noisy devices.

² Kodacolor; first color negative film marketed by the multinational Kodak and produced in the United States. It was on the market, with different sensibilities and under different names from 1942 to 1986. It is not the first color film; Agfa was already producing it in its German laboratories before the outbreak of the Second World War.

³ Zeno of Elea; Greek philosopher born in Elea belonging to the Eleatic school (c. 490-‐430 BC); In Achilles and the Tortoise, his most famous paradox is that a fast runner could never catch up with a slow runner if the former gave the latter an advantage. Extrapolated here to the taking of images and the different supports: chemical and digital, since paradoxically when shooting two cameras at the same time under the same lighting condition, the chemical support reacts instantly to the light, while the digital sensor takes a while short – a matter of milliseconds – in collecting the information that will later be used to generate the image.