The Lord Of Light: Diego Orlando

The photographic vocation of the artist from San Sebastian Diego Orlando stems from the tireless search for light capable of illuminating a personal world full of shadows. A complicated, introspective, passionate and poetic journey from which he feeds to interpret his most intimate universe. A path that goes hand in hand and in communion with various disciplines of the Fine Arts.

His artistic work is neither born nor presented with the aim of reflecting the technical capacity currently offered by millions of megapixels. On the contrary, the “flou effect” and “mannerism” that permeate some of his photographs is a form of protest against current academic photographic purism.

The aim of his work is to investigate and incorporate new technologies into the traditional way of doing photography in order to create a work of art with its own identity and language. Precious, baroque photographs, with a profusion of details, full of allegories and labyrinths hidden in their shadows, fabrics and textures.

His experience in the world of interior architecture, antiques and the importance of colour in the different scenes of the countries in which he has lived, loved or travelled, brings him closer to the chiaroscuro of Caravaggio, to the scenic arts and to the pictorialist photographic movement of the 19th century of Oscar Gustave Rejlander and Henry Peach Robinson.

His artistic creation is faithful and loyal to his personal non-conformism, which has marked his whole life, a permanent struggle between beings who seek from anonymity to set no limits to their way of being and loving between men and women, far from religious, sexual, racial or ideological conventions.

Behind the shadows of an opaque reality that hide different ways of being and feeling. With these photographs he has sought the light that emanates from a new generation, which struggles to be true to itself.

In 2018, Diego Orlando won the International Photography Award (IPA) for “La mirada de Goya”.

An artistic work carried out over two years in different settings in the province of Girona. In it, the artist portrays the subjugation of Spanish women to the strict religion of the 19th century.This photographic series won two awards. One in the fine arts category and the other in the book category.

Since 2018, he has been working on the series “Santos y Mantillas”. In this artistic work, the photographer shows a contemporary vision of the life of martyrs and virgins of Christian culture.

Once again, in 2020, Diego Orlando wins the International Photography Awards (IPA).

This time, he received the “Honourable Mention” for the series “Malleus Meleficarum”, in the same category: fine arts.

He has recently been nominated for the International Fine Art Awards -FAPA- 2021.

Diego has exhibited at the Museum of Photography in Los Angeles and at the Millepiani Gallery in Rome.