The word “empty” sounds as an echo for shiverings and uncertain sadness.

Empty is a synonim for nothing, for absence and barren deserts. Some deserts are charted and others are nothing but stains of vague colors in our thoughts. Not for Tiago Da Cruz. For the portuguese photographer, emptiness is a challenge. His camera hardly shows interest for the populated places or for the faces full of feelings and ideas. The unoccupied corners and, occasionally, the blurry faces, are the ones which strike him. He was quite clear about it in his first night photographs and had it reaffirmed in other series such as “Paradise lost”. His last work, “Void”, speaks for itself. Suggesting stories is what concerns him, not telling them straight. Da Cruz is a voyager. He does not travel looking for images, but to take the camera with him waiting for things to happen. His favorite corners are those within reach of anybody. There are no new places. Hotels, offices, night pubs, and subway passages are some of his favorite places. Many of them could have been photographed a thousand times, although just because of their common nature, they've gone unnoticed a thousand times. However, there's something that allow us to identify the pictures as his.

Da Cruz's signature may be embodied in the combination of cold and warm tones, or maybe in his poetical vision of neon lights. His works make us remember immediately in the most recent german academy, although the label doesn't attach strongly to it. There's too much involvement and much less asepsis. He dominates teh technique, but had good teachers who taught him that one of the best advantages of knowing the theories is to ignore it one time after another till you find what you're looking for. Da Cruz' search lookls like a whisper. An empty, messed bed speaks of a rough night, the brothel's heart-shaped windows define better than words the euphemism of making up the loneliness with a bit of color. The empty seats of a pub illuminated by two spheres make questions about who has been or who will be in there, and the deserted hallways of a subway station evoke a night only suitable for lonely people.

His way of facing the void is, first of all, ituitive. it would be obvious to say that the secret is in the framing, the light and contrast. The photographer dives in the atmospheres till blending with everything surrounding him. It is then when he takes the camera and shoots. Despite there are snapshots of Germany, Spain and Portugal, geography is just an anecdote because pictures are often interchangeable -except for those who know the place. Da Cruz uses lines, curves and perspectives his own way, in order to show the viewer what, in a precise moment, made him feel that the place and time deserved to be photographed. Is a brave photography, especially in a time where technology advances seem to make perfection as a supreme rule. Then, Tiago Da Cruz deals again with reality from a less conventional perspective. While he continues with the “Void” series, he has started a new adventure with the name of “I see a darkness”. In this one, he goes for saturation and noise, in a way where shapes acquire disturbing shapes and volumes, as if they lived in an alternative dimension. Right now, is just an idea shaping itself. If his work is checked, it is clear that, like it or not, he made the hardest thing: His photography is easily ssociated with the name of its author.

Photography Festival “Mira Algeciras” 2005

The best idea conceived by the human being throughout history is the one most impracticable: paradise. Even before being discovered, paradise was lost already. Facing this idea and trying to approach to it seems to be something from the past and future, but never from the present times. Despite everything, each generation tries to reach this place dreamt by all generations in the planet, in plnety different ways. A common object can contain itself the essence of paradise: a bed, as Sara says, can become paradise after a terrible day, a chair after a long walking day, a shower in august. These are temporary representations of eden, symbols that would represent the whole. I want to photograph these symbols. Mi work doesn't try to obtain a global idea of paradise. I approach these symbols which I discover in the day-by-day reality so the viewer approachs to them and tries to know what's behind them. I think our only chance is to know by intuition the paradise behind some revealing signs: if a curtain blocks a window, is probable -just probable- that behind it we find Arcadia, the always searched Eden. In the moment a non-innocent hand draws it back, paradise will degrade till it's destroyed. As in a David Lynch movie, I like the viewer to take part and try to solve the problem he's facing. I always look for corners and sceneries more or less insignificant, which most powerful value is that they can hide, conceal or show in an illusion this wanted place, in which the only chance of entering offered to mortals seems to be precisely that what defines us as mortals: death.