Renán Paredes Ayala is an audiovisual producer based in Quito, Ecuador. His interest in exploring visuality led him to train in film and photography. His enthusiasm for research into the creation and reproduction of images has allowed him to delve into photographic experimentation and, through encountering diverse techniques, to also approach film preservation.
When taking photographs, she reflects on the sensitivity of these materials, imperfection, and happy accidents. Thanks to experimental photography, she has developed projects that explore different photosensitive materials and processes such as Polaroid instant film, 35mm, 120, and Super 8 photography, as well as alternative techniques like cyanotype, anthotype, and the creation of phytographs, among others.
My most enriching experience in the experimental photography diploma program has been connecting and sharing with others. It creates a space where we can dialogue, discover, and understand that photography is a means to forge connections and awaken emotions. Each project we view is an opportunity to understand current themes, and each experimental technique is an open world that allows us to find true creative freedom .
Thanks to the diversity of visuals shared in Agora, we can connect with our images, empowering them towards a space where new revelations come to light.
Highlight Project
Lagunas Reveladas
This project stems from the connection between photography and nature, understanding the photographic surface as a living entity capable of interacting with other substances that agitate its photosensitive surface. These relationships between substances, emulsions, and layers within the photographic material itself create a link with nature through its water. Thus, multi-species organisms form a symbiotic relationship within the materiality of the photographs. A new habitat for the image is created with nature; the change becomes visible in the photographic body, and the microorganisms living in the lagoon water cause a photograph to continually transform.
The interaction of multiple human and non-human agencies over time transforms photographic surfaces and invites us to imagine new possible landscapes, places, shapes and colors, which are revealed together with nature to narrate the current environmental crisis and pollution that the lagoons are going through.