Rubnramosbalsa

Trained as a performance artist as he is, it is not surprising that Rubén Ramos Balsa’s approach to photography is both unusual and highly personal. For him, photography is something to be questioned, taken apart, and re-arranged. Through his manipulations of the fundamentals of the medium he produces an astonishing range of images and objects that stand traditional photography on its head.

Understood literally, the word “photography” comes from the Greek φώς (phos) "light" and γραφίς (graphis) "stylus." It is taken to mean writing with light. From the days of Nicéphore Niépce and William Henry Fox Talbot it has been based upon exposing paper, glass plates, or film sensitized with an emulsion of silver nitrates to light, developing it in a solution that leaves some of the silver in place, and then fixing the resulting image with various acids. Today, this is also accomplished with electro-optical systems using various forms of charge-coupled devices in computer chips. The film, plates, paper, or chips are typically housed in a small box, the camera, and the image acquired by controlling light passing through a lens. Images are then printed on paper, some other surface, or projected on the screen of a computer monitor. That is one way of looking at photography, but that is not good enough for Ramos Balsa.

What constitutes a camera and whether a camera is really necessary are two points of departure for Ramos Balsa’s experiments in performative photography. In one example, he uses a simple hen’s egg as a form of pinhole camera. After emptying out the contents of the egg, he then coats its interior with a photosensitive emulsion and then exposes an image through the hole. He later uses the exposed surface as a projector to cast that image onto another surface. Interestingly, the albumen in the photo-emulsion replicates the traditional use of albumen derived from egg whites and gelatin in early photography.

Other non-traditional means of creating and showing images include using light bulbs with insects in them or with small projectors that turn the bulb into a slide viewer with images of flamenco dancers or castanet players. In Sea, a small camera projects light through the surface of water in a glass onto a wall. The curvature of the glass and the optical properties of the water create the image of a sea shore.

Ruben Balsa is also concerned, as a performance artist invariably is, with time. A photographic exposure is determined by the amount of light accumulated on a photo-sensitive surface within a given time. Changes in the amount of time or in the intensity of the light affect the image. In Solar Days, he uses a pinhole camera to make an exposure lasting twenty-four hours, thus producing a complete record of an entire day. In Diptychs of the Same Thing, he places a straight, untouched image exposed over a long time with one in which he “subtracts” light by moving through the image while dressed completely in black in the same manner one may adjust an image in the darkroom by “dodging” the light. The effects are subtle and elegant and, of course, introduce the artist as an invisible performer in his photograph.

Still other games include taking advantage of the natural properties of photosynthesis that use lights and plants as both projector and film. The light affects the plant and changes its density and coloration through photosynthesis over time, and therefore the image projected through the plant changes. A further example is created by projecting a negative on to grass over time. The qualities of light passing through the negative affect the rate of growth of the grass, thereby forming a “natural” photographic print of the image on the negative. It is still, literally, photography in the sense that it is “writing with light.” Another technique is to use different levels of sunscreen as negatives to have the sun print patterns on the human body much the way bathing suit straps produce tan lines.
Ramos Balsa’s photography is unlike any other. It is the result of a deliberate deconstruction of photography itself through the interrogation of its principles and materials. As such, Ruben Balsa produces a photography that is a pure photography that performs itself.