©Jaume Llorens, Gaia Series

Guest Editor and German photographer Melanie Schoeniger shares a week of European photographers whose work she finds inspiring. Schoeniger’s sensibility is translated through the work she shares; all the photographer’s work has a sense of mystery, interconnectedness and wonder. Schoeniger states:

Independently from his specific subject, this serene, dreamy, and powerful mood is in Jaume Llorens’ images. In his series Gaia, he juxtaposes ethereal impressions and mesmerizing patterns of the natural world: A blurry blossom meets a hazy cloud, Queen Ann’s lace reveals the same pattern as a flock of birds, a meadow in interplay with a wave.

He composes intriguing diptychs that range from evident and striking to subtle and surprising, inviting the viewer to explore all its details, to observe its overall impression to embrace them with all their levels fully, and maybe contemplate Gaia theory and this complex, self-regulating system of life on our planet.

As Chief Seattle stated: “The perfumed flowers are our sister… The rivers are our brother…Remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life that it supports…Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it.“

Jaume Llorens (born 1966, Catalonia) is a longtime lover and practitioner of photography. He shoots most of his images in his native area next to lake of Banyoles where he resides.

©Jaume Llorens, Gaia Series

©Jaume Llorens, Gaia Series

About Gaia Series:

“This series, still in progress, takes its name from the hypothesis by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis which describes Earth as a single superorganism in which living beings and the rest of the planet establish a self-regulating equilibrium that ensures the survival of the whole.

What I have done is to juxtapose photographs of my natural environment and explore what links, echoes and resonances are established between them. Each image brings something to its companion that modifies the interpretation of the whole. It is as if a new reality were generated, a harmonious whole that differs from the simple sum of its parts.

This effect ties in with Ralph Gibson’s theory of ‘visual overtones’, according to which by putting two images together, an effect similar to that of music can be produced when two or more tones combine to generate a different, richer, and more complex third.

The intention of this game pursue a double objective. On the one hand, a desire to remember the hidden links that the elements, living and non-living, maintain between them, and that these links become keys to the self-regulation of the planet. On the other hand, to remember an obvious fact: that our species is part of this precious gear and that, consequently, we have the urgent responsibility to stop turning our back on it and to contribute in an active way to its balance, to its survival, which is also our own.”

©Jaume Llorens, Gaia Series

©Jaume Llorens, Gaia Series

©Jaume Llorens, Gaia Series

“My work is the result of moments of silence observing nature and the surrounding landscape. An intimate and contemplative approach to celebrate its beauty or the magic it gives us. An attempt to convey the emotional or aesthetic impact that this contact provokes; or sometimes to reflect more or less explicitly my own emotional landscape. I feel comfortable with simple, sometimes very minimal images that suggest rather than explain. And infinitely happy when someone recognises traces of poetry in my photographs.” – Jaume

“Visually poetic and quietly powerful, the Gaia series by Jaume Llorens demonstrates the connection between art and science. This series explores the notion of “Earth as a single superorganism”, but through an artistic lens.“ – Deborah Klochko, Museum of Photographic Arts for Lensculture’s critics

©Jaume Llorens, Gaia Series

©Jaume Llorens, Gaia Series

©Jaume Llorens, Gaia Series

©Jaume Llorens, Gaia Series

About Jaume Llorens:

Born in Porqueres, near Girona, Catalonia, in 1966. Fond of photography since he was a teenager. In 2014, he took part in his first collective exhibition. The most notable ones have been the LensCulture group exhibition at Photo London 2023, a solo show at the Fundació Valvi in Girona in 2022, another solo exhibition at the Festival Mirades in Torroella de Montgrí in 2021, and a collective at the Valid Foto Gallery in Barcelona (OFNI Project, 2019). Among his awards, he received the Top Pick at LensCulture Critics’ Choice 2023, the Top 50 at Photolucida Critical Mass 2023, the 3rd place (singles) at the LensCulture Black & White Awards 2022, the selection of his portfolio ‘Deep Inside’ at the Barcelona International Photography Awards, BIPA, 2019, and the 3rd prize in the VI National Photography Competition Canson Infinity .

Jaume’s artworks are currently part of the exhibition  ‘Alone Together; Critical Mass 2023 Top 50‘ at the Colorado Photographic Arts Center.

His Gaia series will also be part of an upcoming Group Exhibition in New York for LensCulture Critics’s Choice Awards 2023.

You can see more of Jaume’s photographs on his website and on Instagram:@jaume.llorens.