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Rebirth of what falls
Art+ chats with Pangasinan based conceptual fine art photographer, Jes Abella. His work tackles the beauty and darkness found in life, death, rebirth, experience, lessons and stories.
text by Ma. Leriecka Endico
text by Ma. Leriecka Endico
Most of the time, photographers are ironically those who are camera shy. They rarely become the subject as they are working behind the lens. Yet this artist from Pangasinan goes against this stereotype.
Jes Abella is a conceptual/fine art photographer whose art is about beauty and darkness that revolves around life, death, rebirth, experience, lessons and stories. The greatest form of self-love they say is to be patient with the person you are becoming. Abella, unlike most photographers, lets himself be his own subject. This is how he begun his photographic work. “I think it all started with my desire to take self-portraits, not because I love myself; though I do, but in a different way. I wanted to become someone, either to become who I want to be or to be someone else entirely. I love editing as much as I love photography and that lead the way for me to make composites from the images I took and create an entirely different world I wish I could live.” Abella said in an interview
Jes Abella is a conceptual/fine art photographer whose art is about beauty and darkness that revolves around life, death, rebirth, experience, lessons and stories. The greatest form of self-love they say is to be patient with the person you are becoming. Abella, unlike most photographers, lets himself be his own subject. This is how he begun his photographic work. “I think it all started with my desire to take self-portraits, not because I love myself; though I do, but in a different way. I wanted to become someone, either to become who I want to be or to be someone else entirely. I love editing as much as I love photography and that lead the way for me to make composites from the images I took and create an entirely different world I wish I could live.” Abella said in an interview
Death of burden
While the artist himself best understood how he would achieve his creative vision, he knew that the best subject would be himself. “I know what pose I should do or what emotions I should portray to capture the image and the idea I have on my mind. But that doesn't mean that I will only be using myself as my subject forever. It could be anyone as long as the message I want to tell will not get lost.”
Meanwhile, struggles as an artist is inevitable. Abella also wrestled with challenges such as finding a location to shoot at. Aside from avoiding repetitive backgrounds, the most important element to consider is the light as it is the nucleus of photography. Another is the fear of being unaccepted. Abella is no exception to these challenges, he adds “it's not about how many likes my image gets. I create art not for everyone to like but for its for me to share my ideas, my passion, my message, my stories, my feelings and emotions. I have so many things what I wanted to share and that's bigger than my fear of rejection."
Meanwhile, struggles as an artist is inevitable. Abella also wrestled with challenges such as finding a location to shoot at. Aside from avoiding repetitive backgrounds, the most important element to consider is the light as it is the nucleus of photography. Another is the fear of being unaccepted. Abella is no exception to these challenges, he adds “it's not about how many likes my image gets. I create art not for everyone to like but for its for me to share my ideas, my passion, my message, my stories, my feelings and emotions. I have so many things what I wanted to share and that's bigger than my fear of rejection."
Failure
While his style is dark, surreal and dramatic, he aims to promote passion and hope. Abella may be a living irony but this kind of transparency and bluntness about himself executed in his art adds more beauty on it. For him, he is happy enough if someone feels something about his images. He recently published a project called “love exists”, a series of images that tells a lot about love so strong and how it could change someone differently.
“Right now I have a number of ideas and inspirations I have which I haven't created yet. I want to focus on [sic] for the mean time because I believe that there is no timeline to success and I want to enjoy the journey. We shall get there someday”
“Right now I have a number of ideas and inspirations I have which I haven't created yet. I want to focus on [sic] for the mean time because I believe that there is no timeline to success and I want to enjoy the journey. We shall get there someday”
