You cannot make the art that you do not feel.
Silvia Travieso
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This week’s episode is all about Silvia Travieso, a Spanish photographer with a very expressive portfolio. Silvia has been taking photographs for over a decade. Her photographs are emotional and thought-provoking, often focusing on mental health topics such as depersonalisation.
We talk about:
– How Silvia creates stunning panoramic photos
– Self-expression and mental health in photography
– How her background in architecture has affected her work
& much more!
Silvia shares a lot of helpful photography tips and tricks in this episode. If you want to improve your photography skills and get better at creating emotional photographs, this episode is for you!
Here is a preview of our conversation with Silvia Travieso.
Q: How do you go about expressing yourself?
Silvia Travieso: When I create a more emotional or therapeutic photo, it’s always important thing for me to find a word to express a feeling. I imagine what shape or texture that feeling has and which part of my body it will be coming out of.
I feel very comfortable sharing photos that, to me, are very dark and deep and emotional. Everybody can interpret [the photos] however they can or want. I don’t have to explain how I feel with words.
For me, 2020 was a very rough year, like for most people. I ended up creating a series of photos around my dealings with anxiety, which I’m very proud of. It was very important to me. For me, anxiety is like a very physical thing. It’s a physical pain. So it has these physical consequences. It has a shape, it has a form, it has a texture.
Q: What’s the most important lesson that you’ve learned after shooting for over 10 years?
Silvia Travieso: You can’t just imitate someone else. I’ve always been fascinated by certain types of photography that I love so much, but it’s just not me. I can’t be a different person. When I take photos, it’s a very raw and very instinctual thing.
You can’t hide yourself in art or in any kind of art expression, so you might as well embrace it. It’s been very important for me when it comes to my self-esteem. If I didn’t like what I do, I wouldn’t do it. I think that’s the most important thing that I’ve learned through photography: there’s no hiding yourself when you create.
Q: Is there a relationship between your background in architecture and your photography?
Silvia Travieso: As a photographer, I think of space in a very different way than the people around me or other photographers that I’ve met. The way I perceive depth: it’s very affected by what I studied and how I specialise in architecture, which was basically pre-visualisation. I specialise in all the images of buildings that haven’t yet been built. It’s a lot of like projecting and imagining how things are going to look, how shadows are going to affect, how textures are going to blend with each other.. I think that has translated a lot in how I shoot and especially in how I edit.
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