Airplanes on the Streets of Madrid

Displayed on the streets of Madrid these days are photographs by Paco Gómez, winner of the INJUVE 2001 prize, designated "hottest new photographer" in the PHotoEspaña awards in 2002 and again in 2006, this time as part of the NOPHOTO collective.

Paco has been visiting Iberia's maintenance hangars in Madrid, photographing aircraft and engines. The results can be seen in 140 different locations in Madrid, including Atocha, Embajadores, Felipe II, Doctor Esquerdo, Arturo Soria, and Bravo Murillo streets.

According to Paco, “it was quite an experience, first to be inside such spectacular facilities as Iberia's maintenance hangars –the engine workshops couldn't be more imposing; it's like a cathedral of the technical—and second, because of being able to show my work not in a close space, but in the streets where passers-by will see it. 

The project was also a challenge, technically. I made the photographs in black and white using an antique camera with 10 x 15cm photographic plates. The large surface of the plates increases the grains of the film and hence the quality of the image. Here there are no pixels, but only particles of light hitting a photosensitive surface on the inside of a camera obscura.

Hidden under a dark cloth, I see everything upside down and backwards. The camera has another peculiarity: the distance between the lens and the plate can be altered under a bellows. The optical axis of the camera doesn't necessarily pass through the centre of the image, and the planes of focus can be changed to create dreamlike atmospheres.

The time and reflection that this camera demands of the photographer, and the relation it establishes with the subject portrayed, endow it with a singular, almost magical power, as if you were in a dream."