BIO-STATEMENT
I was born in the nostalgic city of Montevideo, although my first years were spent in the Uruguayan countryside. I descend from a family of Spanish and Italian immigrants who arrived in a country known then as ’the Switzerland of South America’, while the place in which I grew up was in the throes of an endless economical, social and political crisis. This experience shaped my character and my ability to adapt. I have lived in Uruguay, Argentina, Spain and Japan.
This multi-cultural condition of mine and the fact that I have lived in a number of countries has provided me with different, more layered ways of seeing things; the ability to observe ’from outside to inside’ the customs, ideas and structures of Japanese society. The process of assimilation of these different cultures and countries inspires, in a very direct way, the subjects that I address.
The strength of my Latin American origins allows me to focus on aspects and characters in Japanese society with compositions that, at times, owe their existence to our artistic surrealism and literary magic realism.
Photography is the tool that I use to help me search for my roots and that allows me to bear witness to my complex and at the same time fascinating Latin-Japanese condition. I suppose that this need to ’feel at home’ makes me conceive critical and at the same time poetical images that explore the idea of memory, home or a (second) homeland.
Photography enables me to re-situate and re-define myself in relation to the captivating Japanese society and its sophisticated culture. My condition of ’re-located’ Latin American brings with it a vision that is the fruit of two very different, but at the same time complementary and profoundly human, worlds.
Photography allows me to ’be in the world’ and ’to put down roots’ in the place in which I live.
Daniel Machado
