Ode to Ugliness

This is a project that has been on my mind for a long time. And I know that – if I don’t get it out there – it will never take off. Getting it out will also force me to start looking again...

Chile is a country of extreme contrasts and an extremely beautiful but also violent geography. The latter characteristic takes many shapes: volcanic eruptions, floods, earthquakes and tsunamis.
This violence reflects in the nature of the Chilean people – hospitable, resilient, inventive and aggressive – and in its urban landscape, marked by pollution, endless traffic jams and a remarkable lack of beauty. Not because it is not there, but because it is overwhelmed by the ordinary and obvious, the gross and grotesque.
Beauty appears not to be an issue in a country of miners and fishermen, where functionality comes before everything, let alone beauty.

After a while, one’s senses start to dull and then yield to these relentless visual attacks. Somewhere along the line, we all reach that unavoidable point where the mind just filters out everything, where we don't question anything anymore, however grotesque.
Once that happens, we simply stop "being"; we isolate ourselves from "seeing" and "feeling" the spaces that surround us, and – therefore – the people that we share them with...

This blog is dedicated to finding the things that are hidden in plain sight, the beauty and the anti-beauty, the things we don't want to see, and those we have forgotten how to see.
Wherever possible I have tried to preserve the beauty in the photography, to remind me that a beautiful experience may often come in the disguise of ugliness.