Chema Madoz is a Spanish photographer. He is currently 65 years old, and he was born in Madrid, Spain. He is most famous for his monochrome surrealist images. He went to Universidad Complutense de Madrid so he could study the history of art, and he also studied at the Image Teaching Center and Madrid’s Fine Arts Academy. When he was 4, his mother signed him up for reading and writing classes, where he got lots of inspiration for his art. Madoz uses a Hasselblad camera to take his surrealist pictures.
Style
Chema Madoz is a surrealist photographer. This means his photos have a strange dreamlike atmosphere. Chema Madoz’s photographs take inspiration from the art of Marcel Duchamp and Rene Magritte. In his pictures, Chema Madoz doesn’t use a ton of color. He mainly uses darker and more monotone colors, such as blacks, whites, and browns.
Philosophy
One of Chema Madoz’s biggest ideas behind his work was to make the common use of objects look ridiculous. He wanted to show how differently we can interpret everyday objects, and how they can have many different meanings. When Madoz was 4, his mother signed him up for reading and writing classes. In the crammed space that he took those classes in, he had many visions of photographs that he could take. Those classes were a huge inspiration for his future photos.
Influences
Chema Madoz has influenced me in my work to push the limits of everyday objects. This means to change around the way things look, and to alter expectations in my photography. You can see some of Madoz’s influence on my in my object photography. Some other photographers Chema Madoz is influenced by are Marcel Duchamp and Rene Magritte. They influenced his use or surrealism in his photography.
Compare and Contrast
Here you can see some of the photos I took to imitate those of Chema Madoz. These photos are articulately placed and edited so they could look as close to possible as Madoz’s. On the left are Madoz’s pictures, and on the right are mine. I hope you enjoy.
"Untitled, 2017" (Madoz)
"Aced"
I chose to take this photo of the Ace of Spades because when I love playing card games, such as hearts and euchre. When taking this photo I had to make sure to take it with the light coming in from the proper angle, to make sure I had the proper shadows. Then in Photoshop, I edited out a little chunk of the spade to have the part cut out. I also used the spot healing brush to remove a little bit of other writing on the card, such as the card brand. https://www.artsy.net/artwork/chema-madoz-untitled-354
"Pelota Tenis, 1997" (Madoz)
"Spotted"
I chose this photo of the tennis ball to recreate because tennis is one of my favorite sports to play. It’s so low stress and fun, and it’s a great way to get away from school and other stresses. I drew the black dots on the tennis ball in Sharpie, and then I changed the colors in the image to black and white. https://www.artsy.net/artwork/chema-madoz-pelota-tenis
"Llave Moneda, 2005" (Madoz)
"Key Krone"
I chose to recreate this photo of the coin and key because a few days ago I was cleaning out my room, and I found this cool Norwegian key with a hole in the middle. This was easily the hardest photo to recreate, as I spent a grand total of around 4 hours editing multiple pictures to try and make it as close as possible to Madoz’s. I had to edit out the top of the key that was still showing, edit the background to make it look similar, and enhance some of the shadows. https://www.artsy.net/artwork/chema-madoz-llave-moneda
Personal Artist Statement
All of my images convey the theory of how we can look at everyday images differently. They can also represent real world issues, for example if you look at the card photo you can probably notice that the little cutout in the spade looks like the apple logo. This represents how digitized the world is becoming, and how we are shifting more towards doing things on our devices, instead of playing games such as cards. The image of the key with the coin on top resembles how money can unlock anything if you have enough of it. I had trouble figuring out what the tennis ball picture means, but I think that gives it a cool mysterious vibe. All in all I really enjoyed recreating these photos, even if it came with a lot of editing and time.