Although he has said on several occasions that his love for photography began when he was around 20 years old, when he observed the detail of the skin of an orange in a black and white picture, it wasn’t until some years later, while working as an architectural technician in Madrid with José María Sánchez at FM Arquitectos, that he was given the opportunity to carry out his first professional job.
Since then, his work (technically flawless) has always moved in a field of intense abstraction, a reality polished by his eye, a carefully worked composition and the generation of a meticulous aesthetics, with images in which he imprints a certain degree of timelessness. The image of the pool in Orense (which you can see below), from a project by Mangado, is a good example of this extreme composition, almost unreal neatness, on the verge of minimalism, with a very neat framing, using very little resources and relying on a reality in which time, light and composition are the result of a labourious job.
The abstraction in his images becomes so noticeable, with such extreme beauty, that one is often not very sure of what he or she is seeing, which is also what most attracts of his photography, to which you dedicate a longer time and without actually realising suddenly feel trapped by it.
Many of the images selected here were collected in the book "Pedro Pegenaute Personal", published last year, 2013. The book contains 98 photographs taken between 2006 and 2012 that combine "personal" and "professional" work. The pages are not numbered and contain few texts that have been placed at the end of the book, with the evident intention to focus the viewer’s attention on the photographs. Image becomes the main figure in the metalinguistic discourse that presents Pegenaute's work.
Pedro Pegenaute is one of the photographers with a stronger international profile and among his clients stand out, besides architects such as Herzog & de Meuron, David Chipperfield or the pair Neri & Hu, his reports for London publication Wallpaper in Spain and France, since 2009.
His work is completed with video productions that are largely a reflection of how he understands spaces, landscapes and architecture. They show spaces in a sequential and abstract way, with clear paths and placing people as the main focus in their possible relationship with the architecture shown.
His personality and way of working are best defined by his own words, as you can read in this paragraph from the text he uses to introduce his work on his website:
"The photographer that takes the picture must know how to “see” and then know how to take a picture of what he/she has seen. To do this there has to exist a perfect balance between the place chosen to take the picture, the “right” light, and the composition that the photographer has decided on, and finally that “this something” will be perceived by the one that is looking at the picture. It does not need to be nice, it has to make you feel, suggest something to you.
No matter who is observing it, if it is a child, an old person, a person passionate about art or someone with little involvement. We are all consumers of photography. This is democracy. To take pictures is easy, anyone can do it, but what is not easy is to give the picture soul." Architecture is elasticity volume, space, comfort, proportion, harmony, texture, light combination (…)"
Text by.- José Juan Barba. Dr. Arquitecto.
