Preaching with Light

What distinguishes this species from the rest of the animals is its capacity for artistic creation. Art is the guiding light of the path and the bow that man bends to transcribe his history, his vital environment, his inner demons, and the flight of time. The material from which works of art are born has always been the same clay that gives birth to beauty and nourishes the soul: pigments, lights and shadows, stones, sounds in time, metals and words, fictions, obsessions, hopes, pains, and heartbeats.
Gustavo Pérez decided one day that he would stop writing poetry to dedicate himself to photography, unaware that such a decision cannot be made by the poet, a mere amanuensis of the god of words, and that ceasing to tell and sing in verse is an act of faith that only poetry itself can dictate. Since then, Gustavo has become a chronicler of his time, of the social harshness and misery of a country, and has told his life stories with a camera obscura—a camera lucid, as Barthes would have said—he has put words to rest to come and preach with light. | Germán Guerra