Leslie Gabaldón
Bio
Leslie Gabaldon was born in a Caracas, Venezuela. Leslie is a visual artist and a commercial photographer, who lives and works in Miami, Florida. She attended The New England School of Art and Design in Boston, MA, and The Art Students League of NY. Leslie has shown her work in New York, Miami, Colombia, Argentina, Dominican Republic, and Shanghai.
Her tendencies towards alternative mediums eventually lead her to embrace photography as the foundation of her work. She is concern with issues of cross cultivation and how it shapes societal behavior.
Statement
“idilio” 1 thru 100 is a series that are part of the body of work “Mirages” Mirages
The mirage is caused by an atmospheric condition, and it does not exist.
Metaphorically, what I can capture with my camera in a fraction of a second does not immediately exist in the photographic object that it will be. I have to alter the negative to reveal a memory
of a memory.
Fueled by my urge to escape, the photos become mirages of my own emotional landscape. I end by understanding that reality is fragile, like a soap bubble; it only exists while it floats. Walking through a forest awakens intense feelings.
The constant encounter with physical change, such as light, the sound of the wind, the fallen tree branches, and exposed roots, causes feelings of inner transformation at every step. The danger, the uncertainty, the amazement, and other circumstances, are constantly marking a spiritual imprint.
The more one ventures into the density of nature, the route becomes more internal, and the images converge in the same place, the subconscious. It is as if the journey was dictating the mental topography of the individual. It is unavoidable to feel that everything has a direct relationship with one's own existence. Emotional mirages begin to occur.
The forest is the antithesis of the village, what is before culture, beyond society. For me, it is like an archetype of the soulful territory where there are no civil rules, where the fauna of the human psyche lives. To enter the forest, you must go through the same mirror as Alicia* and surrender to everything being the other way around; nothing is as you believed or wished. Just as in the physical forest, finding the exit to emotional labyrinths is only achieved by traveling as many times as necessary, perhaps forever, making the paths and leaving marks to recognize the return.
