Gente tomando helado, Cadaques

Printing on paper Hahnemuhle Edition 1 of 7 Hyperbole Initiated as an exploration of what light and shapes look like coming through the lens while working with slow shutter speeds directly from the camera, in this series Bustamante seeks to capture not a sharply frozen or figurative moment of reality, but a slightly longer period of time and space, resulting in a more abstract representation. In this work-in-progress project entitled 'Hyperbole', Facundo's approach is to capture those incidents of light and form in a short period of time, but long enough to be ‘brushed’ into the frame, generated by traditional photographic techniques, without the aid of post-production effects. With a considerable degree of uncertainty as to the results, his aim is to embrace and seek out the underestimated imperfection as a kind of response to an increasingly perfectionist world; where technology and digital tools play an important role in reinforcing and spreading the idea of automatic, effortless, instant, stylish, superficial and flawless representations so often seen on social media and strongly reflected in ordinary behaviours in our current society. Such representation, a symptom of late capitalist thinking, has transformed the culture of the first two decades of this century into a territory of commonplaces, what Marc Augé has called 'supermodernity'. This phenomenon has been greatly extended in the field of visual production, where the processes of acculturation have deepened, and the systems of representation have given way to a loss of identity. In this sense, the artistic practice of contemporary photography assumes a critical role, exploring new forms of expression that are increasingly aimed at questioning the 'absolute truth' of the photographic concept and responding to the highly aestheticized image typical of the current era. In this way of thinking, which gives photography a prominent role in the framework of cultural construction, the visible is materialised in the set of images generated by the subjective gaze - be it that of the author or that of the spectator - depending on a specific and unique socio-cultural context. In this sense, "Hyperbole" is anchored in this ambiguous game of perceptions, where the blurred boundary between what is real and what is not is nothing more than an interpretation of the self with the world, which stands out as one of the most natural and human qualities of the photographic medium. Finally, photography offers us the infinite possibility of imagining and reimagining, which is more necessary today than ever.