Your name
Rodrigo Illescas
Place of birth
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Place where you live now
Buenos Aires, Argentina
3 words to describe you
I'm restless, curious, quiet
Why do you take pictures?
Because it is the way I express my vision of the world
Where do you get your inspiration?
I am inspired by what I see and live. Also in cinema, painting, literature and theater- four arts that are intimately associated with photography.
Who are your influences?
Art in general is a source of influence. However, there are creators that I study regularly: Alfred Hitchcock, Andréi Tarkovski, Agnès Varda, the Peeping Tom theatre company, the French writer Pascal Quignard and the German writer W. G. Sebald, the painter Edward Hopper. Among others...
What determines the subject matter you choose?
The theme or concept that I develop arises from a constant search and, above all, from a feeling that this path is the right one at that moment. The theme is likely to change as it develops. This is because fieldwork proposes its own "realities". That is why chance is an assistant that always accompanies me.
What impact would you like your art to have?
Through the observation of a forbidden reality and the representation of it to make it visible, I seek to raise awareness about certain issues. I seek to have an impact on the memory of the people. Not in a direct way, from the journalistic, but by mixing it with the poetic.
What artwork do you never get bored with?
I can't say a single one: Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock, Offret by Andréi Tarkovski, Les glaneurs et la glaneuse by Agnès Varda and Jagers in de Sneeuw by Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Is there anything you want to add?
Photography, being such a powerful medium, is a very important tool to create interest and sensitivity about issues that affect us as a society. It is from this perspective and with this responsibility that we must photograph.

The cathedrals of nostalgia
Project statement

They are there. Submerged in a still time. They are mortal gods preaching on their own fragments. Those bodies silence their history. Silence while plunging into their absence.
Every night, there is a kingdom. There are talks about stones of light, of endless roads, of miraculous bridges and even of pristine cathedrals.
However, there is only one shining from which they are born, and one night that covers them.
They risk themselves at the last light. They wait in silence. In the silence they wash away more than guilt.
They do not look at those who see them. They don't see us. They enlarge their backs against forgetfulness, they become monuments at the beginning of the night. The humblest bodies evoke an incomplete past.
The shining immobilizes them. A memory absorbs them. They stop against an empty dream. They are their own absence in that terrifying solitude.
They are there. They make gestures without witnesses. They take off their faces. They whisper their own nostalgia, the fear and the emptiness, while they wash their hearts in silence.

As cities grow they also leave behind- in the midst of desolation- pieces of themselves. That forgetfulness, that neglect is also part of their history. In spite of these side effects, as society we keep on turning our backs on this situation. In Argentina, a single decision ended up with entire towns being thrown into oblivion. This decision had to do with the lack of financing and the subsequent closure of some train lines that connected the cities with the surrounding towns. The end result of this measure means entire towns with their few remaining inhabitants fight for their memory and for their history as they embrace an impossible hope. Each one of these inhabitants are like cathedrals of nostalgia that are erected in the middle of loneliness. They are immersed in the silence of their own fragments. Inhabiting incomplete, suppressed stories. But they are still there. In the center of an imaginary scene; from the bottom of a space that covers them. Portrayed as guests in their own world, gently discovered in their silent insinuation. They are hidden faces. These cathedrals stop the scene at the right moment, at an almost unnoticeable instant in which things, each in its own way, make us a promise.

These images try to place themselves on the threshold of an event. Raising questions that not only ask the main characters, but also ask the viewers who can only confirm their presence. Yes, we are here. And we can't stop seeing each other.

@rodrigoillescasph