Lúa Ocaña – Untitled from Don’t Break series (2011)

I first featured Ocaña’s work roughly a year ago. I liked it quite a bit but it didn’t really reach out and grab me by the throat like say Allison Barnes or Sannah Kvist, and after just a single encounter I compulsively spend days meditating on the work.

This popped up on my dash the other day and I’m glad for that because I have been meaning to spend further time with her photos–it’s just that frequently in the rushed fuss and bustle to keep this blog running, work that I like but doesn’t necessarily immediate worm its way under my skin falls (unfortunately) by the wayside.

For now I have two additional observations to offer regarding Ocaña‘s photos. First, it’s interesting how her visuals play with the ubiquity of a certain minimalism embraced by hordes of internet famous image makers–a naked model against a white wall in medium close up with light falling in such a way that you know a window is just beyond the edge of the frame.

However, there is an intense vitality to Ocaña‘s work; a vitality absent from 99.9% of thematically adjacent imagery. I think the best I know how to point to that vitality is to refer to it as ‘intense introspection as a route to surreal experience’.

This leads to the second point: there is another image maker working in a similar style: Els Vanopstal. Yes, her work is a bit more varied and formal. But I can’t look at this image and not automatically connect it with Ocaña.