Antonio Banderas

ANTONIO BANDERAS (Málaga, 1960).
"La balanza", from the series "Secretos en negro", Málaga, 2010.
Digital photography on paper on Dibond.
Copy H.C.
Signed, titled, justified and with information of the print run on the back.
Series exhibited at the Cervantes Institute in Madrid in 2010.
Slight damage.
Measurements: 75 x 100 cm.

The famous actor Antonio Banderas has developed in parallel to his film career, especially in recent decades, a photographic work that has become known in international exhibitions. "Secrets in black" is the title of the series to which the photograph we are bidding for belongs, a series made up of 23 photographs brimming with theatricality and glamour, in which women appear as independent and empowered. She uses myths and references from literature, painting or opera and linked to Spanish culture such as Carmen, Don Juan Tenorio, The Barber of Seville or Goya's "La Maja Desnuda". From these references, he creates a sensual and elegant atmosphere in an intimate and studied environment. This series could be seen at the Cervantes Institute in Madrid in 2010.

In the photograph shown here, "The Balance", Banderas proposes an aesthetic and symbolic reflection on balance and equity. The image presents two female figures wrapped in veils that insinuate the shape of their faces, but without explicit exhibition of the body, suggesting a tension between sensuality and formal restraint. As we can see, her work in Secrets on Black is characterized by a theatricalized, minimalist and conceptual mise-en-scène, in which the body -generally female- becomes a vehicle for exploring themes such as desire, the multiplicity of the self and inner silence. The choice of black as a background unifies the series and refers to a symbolically charged space: black as the hidden, the intimate, the unconfessable. The treatment of light is especially remarkable: in this photograph, the contrast between the illuminated skins and the dark background creates an almost tenebrist atmosphere, heir to the baroque pictorial tradition, but reinterpreted from contemporary digital aesthetics. The plasticity of the body and the accuracy of the reflections reveal a considerable technical mastery and a very careful aesthetic intention with which he enters the field of constructed photography.