Andrés González Tilve and Camouna, our readers picks #322, succeed in revealing people’s souls. The first captures it in the heart of a Vietnamese market, and the second through nudity.
Andrés González Tilve
Born in 1985 in Galicia, Spain, Andrés González Tilve studied business before turning to photography. In 2016, he travelled to the other side of the world, to Vietnam, to start a personal project. “I then carried out the rest of this project in 2018. I spent three months travelling across the country, then to Laos and Cambodia,” he adds. A keen observer, the artist likes to be guided by his emotions, and strives to capture his environment with realism. “I came to this territory by chance, on the occasion of the wedding of a former colleague of mine. She told me about Can Tho (the largest city in the Mekong Delta) and its famous floating markets,” he adds. Places swarming with people and energy. There, as early as four o’clock in the morning, the merchants start selling their products. Inspired by the surrounding tumult, Andrés González Tilve was able to capture sensitive moments, rare glimpse of calm in the heart of an effervescent space.
© Andrés González Tilve
Camouna
“I photograph by instinct, as I would if I were talking to someone. Once freed from embarrassment and modesty, my models live and express what they are, what they have in them at the precise moment of our meeting. I photograph the blossoming in each one of them. Without staging, I surrender myself to capturing everything I receive while sculpting the movement that takes shape,”
says Camouna, a 34-year-old photographer and actress. Passionate about bodies and skin, which is “of all the colours of [her] palette, the one she prefers”, the artist works with nudity and strives to reveal, discover and love bodies. “My pictures can be considered feminist. They are sensitive, raw, cruel, buried, simple, without fuss, instinctive, unmasked…”, she confides. By surrounding herself with people she knows well, Camouna lets herself be guided by mutual trust, by a need to showcase proud, liberated women. “My models are not professionals. By choosing to pose in this way, they convey a kind of empowerment,” she continues. A delicate exploration of the female gaze.
© Camouna
Cover picture: © Camouna