Santiago Bustamante
Bio
He holds a degree in Communications from the University of Lima. In the late 90s he took courses with Billy Hare and Antonio Ramos at what was once the emblematic Antonio Gaudí Institute.
In 2000 he traveled to the United States, and after three years of receiving individual advice from photographer Stephen Shore, he obtained an MFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York (SVA). It was in NY where he received the prestigious Aaron Siskind Scholarship twice, participating in various exhibitions in spaces such as the Brecht Forum and the White Box gallery. In 2001, after the 9/11 attacks, he was part of the digitalization area of the “Here is New York” project (A Democracy of Pictures). His work in “Here is New York” is included in the Collection of the Library of Congress of the United States (Washington DC), the Collection of the New York Historical Society (NY), and the Collection of the Brooklyn Arts Council (NY).
His work is present in important collections such as: the Library of Congress of the United States, the New-York Historical Society, the Brooklyn Arts Council, the Contemporary Art Collection of the Museum of Art of Lima (MALI), the Jan Mulder Collection, the Jorge Villacorta Collection, the Collection of the Peruvian-North American Cultural Institute (ICPNA), and the Latin American Photo Library (FoLa, Buenos Aires).
Statement
The images are a mirror of my own feelings. In this sense, the solitude and abandonment of these nocturnal scenes is none other than my own solitude, my solitude as an observer who, through the use of equivalences, sublimates conflicting and dark emotions, transforming them into harmonious and balanced compositions, as well as pure and bright colours. This imperious desire to order chaos and purify reality is nothing other than a rigorous attempt at self-analysis whose main purpose is to accommodate and purify abstract emotions, filtering them of their negative and painful content, and turning them into an endless search for the most sublime, untouchable and redeeming beauty.
