About me

From my university years, when I first watched an image slowly emerge on a sheet of white paper inside a darkroom, I knew that photography would be part of my life. That almost magical moment sparked a fascination that has never left me. Although my professional career has unfolded in the field of engineering, photography has always been a constant thread, accompanying me and evolving alongside me.

My first serious steps came in Zaragoza, at the Spectrum Canon School, where I discovered the importance of technique, composition and the power of a trained eye. That early training laid the foundations for everything that would follow.

In the early 1980s, I acquired my first camera: an Olympus OM10 fitted with the Zuiko 50mm f/1.8. For decades it was my inseparable companion. With it I learned to read light, to value patience, and to build images slowly. I still have it — dusty but cherished — as a sentimental object that represents my beginnings, even though my daughter keeps insisting it should be hers.

With the arrival of digital photography, my work took new directions. I left black and white behind and moved into colour, while always holding on to what matters most: the concept behind each image. My intention is to provoke a pause in the viewer — an invitation to reflect, to be surprised, or simply to contemplate the beauty of the everyday.

During those years of transition and exploration, Caborian was an invaluable space. That online community, for many years the reference forum for photography in Spain, gave me something that goes beyond technique: honest exchange with other photographers, constructive criticism among peers, and the understanding that serious photography is also built through dialogue. Being an active part of that forum helped me sharpen my eye and find my place within the medium.

Some of that work caught the attention of Espacio Foto, a Madrid-based shop specialising in fine art photography, which became interested in my still lifes and chose to include them in their selection. Seeing them displayed and available for sale — in limited, numbered and certified editions — was one of those quiet satisfactions that stays with you: the confirmation that what you do makes sense beyond the walls of your own studio.

In recent years I have focused on common objects, giving them an unexpected and almost living presence. Light has become my primary tool — a way of shaping the simple until it becomes meaningful. This period has been deeply influenced by my training with Harold Ross, an American photographer and world reference in light painting techniques, whose methods have opened up an entirely new way of working with light and volume.

Throughout my career I have drawn inspiration from a range of artists. I am drawn to the chiaroscuro and atmosphere of the Dutch Baroque painters, who were able to lend solemnity to the ordinary. I am equally inspired by the objective and almost reverential eye with which Albert Renger-Patzsch revealed the inherent beauty of objects and nature, the sculptural quality Edward Weston brought to everyday things, the silent poetry of Josef Sudek, and the conceptual precision of Chema Madoz, as exact as it is evocative. I do not seek to imitate their styles, but to learn from their sensibility and engage, in my own way, with that visual tradition.

I am often told that my photographs are visual metaphors, and I consider that one of the greatest compliments I can receive. My photography is, at its core, a way of thinking: a silent conversation between light, objects and the viewer.

Jaime Mugaburu