The quiet photographer.

Joaquín Valdeón is a restless artist. A musician by profession and an enlightened thinker by vocation, his life has developed in environments that have fostered his passion for art, travel and friendship.

He has chosen photography for some years now as a means of artistic expression for a good part of his vital concerns. Focusing almost exclusively on the portrait, his models generally belong to his closest environment. Equiped with a square-format Hasselblad camera, Joaquín prefers traditional black and white over current digital systems, which he knows but hardly practices. As an expert in conventional techniques, he develops his own reels and positives personally and carefully his copies.

His continuously-growing photographic work is the fruit of his effort and perseverance; he does not pretend to revolutionize the medium but to establish himself in it. In this sense, Joaquín is a classic photographer and, as such, he is indifferent to quirky inventions. His thing is to transmit emotions, to cross the barriers that separate him from his subjects; his original and Spartan talent lies in the concepts.

What is most surprising about his images, apart from an exceptional technical and formal clarity, is the stillness and tranquility that emanates from his characters; they are literally alive in our presence, transcending time and space to become timeless characters. If for him photography is a mirror that reflects his reality and that of his own, it is as if he himself had disappeared behind the mirror to leave us face to face with his true protagonists. Joaquín is discreet, he does not impose: he observes, feels and, with all the patience in the world, shoots. Joaquín’s mastery consists in unveiling that magical moment in which light and expressiveness come together to quietly discover the intimate consciousness of his subjects, which, as almost always happens, is also our own.  

Carlos Casariego, November 2013.