All Images 2009 © Glenn Bernabe
LIBERATION.
The images are of people that you see everyday virtually anywhere; in the office, their home, the gym. As individuals and as characters, They understand who they are, what they deem as being important and what it is they are passionate about. To them, is that what is truly real? They know this deep inside and it's a warm feeling. It's the kind of feeling you get on a warm summer day when your mind is free to wander. Imagine having that feeling all the time. Being the modern world as it is where things always seem to be closing in and we eventually become the countless number of faceless people doing what it is we're supposed to do. How do we know ourselves and keep from being lost in the crowd? Maybe it's something that they know that the rest of us don't. Could it be something spiritual, a moment of clarity or even beauty itself? Maybe that's just something for you to decide.
For me, this is a personal journey to explore the world around us not only in a romantic way but in a way reflecting the world as we know it concerning real situations and real people. By doing this, I ignore the usual conventions of Romantic Realism, which tend to over-dramatize our modern world into a almost near-utopia, (an implied realism, as contrasted with mere fantasy and a moral vision with a standard of beauty & virtue) and try for a more existential, internal and individualistic vision. One of spiritual awareness with aspirations to transcend the ordinary within ones' own experience. By portraying this, then beauty exists within the ordinary on a physical and internal level which is intrinsic to the whole human experience.
