Cristian Ureta is a Chilean artist who works primarily in analog photographic mediums. The work shown here was most likely shot with a Holga or similar medium format. Ureta's black and white work makes incredible use of shadows and highlights. His images often employ contrast in a way that creates pattern over representation. Ureta chooses to fill his frame with all the information in a scene and often the sky is given just as much (if not more) attention then the land and figures on it. His colored images too have this sense of "full screen" that makes for a wonderful and unique composition.
Ureta's work is also intriguing conceptually. A lot of his practice involves revisiting places to rekindle or document history that has been lost. This is especially true with his series Volviendo a la Tierra / Returning to Land, which both the black and white images were taken from. Ureta has returned to a former mining town, Chuquiamata, to honor and document the lives of those displaced from the area. Ureta's work has an honesty I really appreciate as well as an awareness for his impact as an artist in his surrounding area.
Ureta's compositions can turn the dull into something interesting and beautiful which I admire. His use of subdued color palate is also much appreciated when it feels like every image I look at is hyper-saturated. This work has a subtly that I continue to look to not only in an attempt to understand his process of image-making, but also his process of recapturing the land that is precious to him.
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