A simple set of words, read like an incantation:
“There is a place,
for you, for they, for us.
Let’s talk,
let’s call,
let’s rise.
Today we are one.
Let’s talk.”
So begins Spanish photographer Francisco Gomez de Villaboa’s beguiling series Public Matter. Moving between striking black and white and soft washes of gray, the images take the human body for a spin. Issues of loneliness, isolation, and frustration are brought to light as the photographer takes on current social and political issues and their connections to mental health and LGBTQ+ communities.
Public Matter, Gomez de Villaboa says, “is about what actually matters. I wrote that text to say let’s stop these echo chambers and let’s really talk, let’s find some common ground for all of us by speaking about things that are painful. I wrote the text to say that there is a space for all of us in this world.”
For Gomez de Villaboa, the body is a space upon which society’s issues and concerns are both manifested and projected. The photographs are infused with a sense of surrealism, dancing between cleverly confounding and delightful. The photographer begins by making a drawing, then building scenes that are dramatic in their setup. Using studio lighting techniques, the bodies found in these images are abstracted—at times almost mutilated—as they morph into one another, entwined, and melting into the darkness.
With direct one-word titles such as Shadowbanned, Ghosting, and Pressure, Gomez de Villaboa presents the viewer with terms and emotions ripped from contemporary life. These can be loaded words in our society—Hope, Validation, Unable—and yet presented here with a sharpness of style and design they have clarity. Two phones, suspended in the air, have the strange grace of lovers poised to meet but just falling shy of each other. An arm with a clenched fist rises up through the picture plane as hands reach out and grasp it. A spotlight shines on an arched back.
Growing up in a small town in Andalucia, Gomez de Villaboa was surrounded by a traditional Catholic community. Photography became his path to a world of creativity and experimentation. Unable to pursue art at school, he studied design, later moving to London where he began his professional career, learning on the go. Working across portraiture, talent, and fashion photography he injects his personal work with the drama of editorial imagery and brings the faces and voices of his queer community into the world of fashion.
Describing his process, which first begins with drawings of the images he wants to make, Gomez de Villaboa says: “It’s important to leave a lot of room for the moment. I’m all for improvising but I like to have a plan for the way I envision the images.” This balance between foresight and improvisation comes through in his work, as does his earlier training in design. Activism and inclusion are also meaningful parts of his artistic toolbox. “I think it’s a reflection of myself that I try to be a person who looks after the mental health of those I’m collaborating with,” he elaborates.
The photographs in this series traverse a spectrum of emotion, as Gomez de Villaboa notes how society forces a specific type of pressure upon us where, “we are constantly editing negativity out of our lives; along with the painful and difficult. It’s so important to speak, to learn,” he says. “Sometimes to get to a better state of mind, you need to process and speak through hard things. I want people to spend more time understanding what’s going on.”
In this sense, the photographer is asking the viewer to pause and to think about larger matters, both public and private, where issues of social injustice overlap with the realities of sexuality and queerness; where the digital world exerts an overwhelming influence on the emotional one. “Society can create and fulfill at the same time as being destructive. For queer minds, we’re constantly having to fight or find our place.”
Where the work comes alive is in moments of unabashed cheek and visual wonder. For every heavy issue, each moment of strife or loneliness, Gomez de Villaboa is not afraid to be sexy in these images. The body may at times be a site of sorrow or pain but it is also one of beauty and joy. In Public Matters, the photographer paints an image of life, both complex and simple, bright and dark. A life that finds space for you, and they, and us.
Editor’s note: We discovered this remarkable work through the LensCulture Black & White Photography Awards 2023. Discover more award-winning black-and-white photography by all 38 photographers from 23 countries.
