Since he started art school almost 30 years ago, Fernando Delgado's life has been taking him closer and closer to photography.
When he was studying graphic arts at The Cooper Union, he remembers a teacher told him that he sees the world like a photographer, not like a designer or a sculptor.
The thought stuck with him.
Finally, he said, after 25 years in the fashion business, he's started to flex his repressed photography muscles. His first solo show, “Compositions,” is now up at Artspace 116 Downtown.
“Photography can take you in any direction,” he said. “I'm enjoying the process.”
His photographs are nearly monochrome portraits of objects, combining ceramics he's collected in white, black, bronze or a few primary colors.
“People say they see Georgia O'Keeffe in it. OK. Some people say sex, or sensuality. OK. That's not my processes, but if you see that, it's fine,” he said.
The forms are simple 1940s and 1950s flower vases and glassware. He simply takes portraits of them, but turns and lights them so they're nearly unrecognizable.
“It's an homage to one of my teachers, Louise Nevelson,” he said.
While in college at Parsons School of Design in the early 1980s, Nevelson — who was famously eccentric — sent her class on an odd art assignment.
“She told us to go out and collect garbage to photograph, anything that had a good form,” Delgado said. “I never looked at anything the same way again.”
He found, well, trash. He loved how it looked in the lens of his camera, how it glinted and how the forms simply stood out, even under simple light from a window. He uses the same techniques in his photography today, but with his glassware.
Delgado is originally from Santiago, Cuba, but moved to New Jersey and later New York, establishing himself in the high-fashion world as a retail creative designer for Bloomingdale's, Avon and Macy's, and later in advertising. But, he said, during his career he constantly looked at the displays, the products and packages he was putting together in a two-dimensional way, like a photographer.
“I deal with some much design imagery,” in the advertising world, he said. “I wanted it all gone.”
He wanted the objects to make the picture, not the other way around.
Delgado strived for years, working his way up the corporate ladder to become a creative designer at Bloomingdale's in New York.
“My goal was Bloomingdale's,” he said. “Creativity was important.”
It was a place, he said, that encouraged and fostered creative talent to design its stores, its displays and its look.
He eventually moved on to work in advertising, and remains a consultant in New York, while he lives part-time in Placitas.
“I came here after 25 years in advertising,” Delgado said. “At 50, I wanted to not be working for anyone. I incorporated my company, and photography is part of it. I needed a smaller place, one of nine speaks Spanish, and the culture fits. I never thought I'd live here. I'm ready.”
His next show will be in February at the American Institute of Architects gallery in Albuquerque. For the show, “The Architecture of Nature,” he's photographing flowers and plants.
“I started with botanicals,” he said. “Things that we think are dead, but are alive.”
