Adriana Lestido – I purposefully linked photographer’s name to one of her series, because to me it’s a great example both of Lestido’s work, and of photo series in general.

I discovered the name when I was researching for my “Tango On” project . That’s when I first saw “La Salcera”. It was astonishing how in one image the whole story was told.  And there was more, much more great photography to be discovered.

Being from Argentina, Adriana Lestido presents her world, especially women with such compassion and… tenderness. It’s documentary photography yet very poetic, emotional, with a side taken, – a feminine side, a mother’s side, a daughter’s side, a personal (as in human being) side.  I also must say that Lestido’s photography has impecable sense of taste, she is a natural, she is good. 

“I do not photograph what I see, because I already saw it. What I want to see is what my eyes can’t see. I photograph what I feel but I cannot see.” – Adriana Lestido

I started this post with mentioning series. Here I can say: either Lestido tells a story in one image, as powerful as it can be. Or she tells a story with a series of images, building a narration, from beginning to end, like a film unfolding, and it’s a damn well built sequence.

I was amased then, and I am amased now, how well.  My learning curve, it was, and I am still learning… To build a series isn’t easy. It’s not like stacking all the trash into a set, and hoping it will figure out itself.

Nor it’s taking your best images and putting them together hoping that will work, because they are so good, individually.  Both are well-beaten roads to disaster, if you ask me.*

To build a series means to tell a story using just enough images  the story needs.

It means selecting images, arranging them in a certain order, creating a story with a climax (how to pick an image for that, what kind of image ?), choosing the first one, the last one, the ones in between (for a viewer to be able to breathe) – all to create and maintain a rhythm, because I believe that rhythm is the most important element in photo series.
Well, enough said. I  better leave you with this video, and hope you will enjoy it as much as I do: ADRIANA LESTIDO ” LO QUE SE VE” 

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* unless you are Daidō Moriyama or someone of that calibre.