Camilo Gomez

Blooming Colombia A + zoom	Blooming Colombia B + zoom	Blooming Colombia C + zoom	Blooming Colombia D + zoom
Erotic Flower A + zoom	Erotic Flower B + zoom	Erotic Flower C + zoom	Erotic Flower D + zoom
Abstract Flower A + zoom	Abstract Flower B + zoom	Abstract Flower C + zoom	Abstract Flower D + zoom
Sappho's Eye + zoom	Sappho's Grotto + zoom	Sappho's Pond + zoom	Sappho's Dean + zoom
Sappho's Flower + zoom	Backyard Flower + zoom	Gota + zoom	Lips + zoom
Ojo + zoom	Reef + zoom

What is your artwork about (underlying concept, focus, themes, intent, etc)?

Photographing nature and the human body is about the essentials, it is about going back to basics. It is about recognizing the beauty of what is immediate in our bodies, and in its environment.

What informs your artwork or what are your influences?

The drive of my work is the joyful exuberance of the what is manifest and not manifest in our worlds. All what nature grants is for our delight, it is meant to give us tools to evolve and to become every day, better, more compassionate human beings. Not harming myself, anybody or being, is the only commandment I strive for; everything else is meant to be enjoyed for the purpose of experience and evolution.

What mediums, techniques, or processes are involved in your art making (and why these)?

I use digital photography because it gives me the opportunity to more freely, interpret what I capture with the camera. Millions are photographers, but very few develop a refined concept, as a powerful means of communication and transformation. Photography is gaining, more and more, a relevant place in art, as we develop a deeper understanding of it.

What are your other passions in life and how have these influenced your work?

My passions are love and yoga, poetry, my 12 year old daughter Io Gomez, over all, and getting to know places and people.

Why are you an artist?

I am an artist because I gave myself the opportunity to be what I am meant to be.

I am an artist because I believe that by exploring the archetypes of the collective unconscious, I can influence, sensitize and transform the spectator of my work, so he or she, can come into communion with what is being expressed in the exposed piece. With my work I want to build an expansive common sense of love and responsibility within our social and ecological environments.

At different stages of my life, as a spiritual seeker, I have had the fortune to live in Japan, China, India, Canada, Europe, and Austria, apart from traveling across many other places in Asia and South America. These voyages changed the topography of my mind, in the sense that I had to broaden the conceptions I had of humanity, as I came to realize there is deep pain and generosity, everywhere. This is why I believe in the postulates of more free, practical, and deeper philosophies which don't burden us with the fundamentalism and guilt of religions. As an artist I try to convey these points of view in my work.

What matters to you most about the work that you do?

What matters most to me while capturing images and enlarging them on paper, is to "confine" and share the soul of the photographed person or object.

Why do you use digital photography instead of traditional?

Traditional photography has evolved into digital, according to the spontaneity of freer societies. Modernity facilitates more immediate and profound expressions. I work both, traditional and digital photography, while having been educated in the former. Technically and language wise, traditional and digital photography may still seem, or be a bit different. But, in the long run, they are not. You could act as a traditional photographer and still use the digital media, or you could strive using traditional photography, to aim at what you can do more creatively and effectively, with digital photography.

Your photography of both nature and the human form is very sensual and often erotic, can you comment on this?

Erotism is the drive of life. We are the result of conscious or unconscious erotism. Why denying what is so natural and beautiful? Tantra is the science of experience, from which yoga offsprings. Yoga means "union". Coming into terms with what we most desire with innocence and goodness, is spontaneous sensuality. If there is no addiction to it, then, erotism, becomes a powerful means of evolving our senses into higher ways of communing with nature and divinity. Energy and consciousness, gross and subtle, are the one resource, the motor of physical and spiritual evolution. Love and its making, is the substance of the universe, its sole vibe.

On a street, living across each other, who is more spiritual, the prostitute who receives visitor after visitor, his or her mind in god, in the divine, or the monk who prays and tries to meditate, his or her mind on the prostitute's deeds? The more secrets we harbor, the sicker we are.

What are the relationships that you are proposing in your diptychs and triptychs?

Those of harmony, like the ones a musician uses to assemble notes in his or her mind, for the minds of others.

Education/Professional Experience

• BA in Advertising and Marketing, UJTL, Bogota, Colombia, 1985
• Wide experience in commercial, aerial, underwater, portrait and self-expression photography
• Continuing Education, Portrait Photography teacher, ACAD, Calgary, Alberta, 2003

Awards/Scholarships

• Two self-expression photography awards, one by the British Council and the other one by the Republic Bank, in Bogota, Colombia
• Second prize winner of the II Alejo Carpentier Short Story National Contest, Bogota, Colombia, 1986

Selected Exhibitions

• New Names, Republic Bank, Bogota, Colombia, 1986
• Bellarca Gallery, Bogota, Colombia, 1985

Memberships

• Alberta Professional Photographers Association, 2003

Publications

• Five Annual Ecological Photography Books - Occidental Bank, Bogota, Colombia, 1996-2001
• Ample publication of editorial and commercial photography in books, magazines, newspapers, brochures, calendars, tourism guides, etc., in Colombia

Significant commissions and collections

• Commissioned to photograph ecological and social aspects all around Colombia, during 5 years (1996-2001), by the Occidental Bank of Colombia