“Nothing, absolutely nothing makes sense, if we don’t admit that people are not islands, independent of each other; every person is a piece of the continent, a part of the whole.” (Thomas Merton, 1955).

In “We are not islands”,Ordóñez shows us more than twenty poetic landscapesclose to abstraction, with a markedly reflexive and transforming intention. The photographs of this series, created from simple shapes, capture the simple beauty of the islands, beauty that has the ability to move us and connect with the purity of nature. Landscapes that, symbolically, represent the telluric link between all human beings.

Island: Portion of land surrounded by water. And also an area clearly separated from the surrounding space, in stations, airports, public roads, etc.

Thus we see ourselves too often: as islands, separated and disconnected from the rest of humanity. Surrounded by an empty space that, in a illusive way, protects us from a society that we believe hostile.

But the reality is different. The islands don’t float in the sea, they are lands that emerge from the earth’s crust and are connected to the solid part of the planet. In the same way, all human beings are interconnected much more than we can imagine, and also with nature itself.

We are not islands and neither are the islands themselves.

César Ordóñez, photographer and video-artist, develops his activity mainly between Tokyo (his city lab) and Barcelona (his hometown). He uses the universality of visual language as a tool to reflect on today’s world, the beauty of existence and its fragility. Exploring how our thoughts and attitudes influence our environment, and the daily evolution of the societies in which we live, and vice versa. With a vital, intimate and often introspective style, his works move between the reality and the metaphor, between the lived moments and the dreamed ones.

His career as an author began in the late 80’s in Barcelona, and he fully resume it from 2007 (when he created “Ashimoto”, his first “Tokyoite” project) after a parenthesis of more than 15 years, during which he prioritizes his professional activity as a photographer in the fields of portraiture, fashion and advertising, and the associative work within the photographic world.

He has exhibited in more than 10 countries such as: Spain, Mexico, France, Italy, Russia and Japan. He holds more than 15 solo exhibitions, more than 50 group ones and numerous art fairs. Since 2012 it highlights his participation in Tokyo-Ga.org, an extensive project about the Japanese capital, which brings together 100 international photographers. His works are part of important art collections such as: Fundació Foto Colectania (Barcelona, Spain), Auer Photo Foundation (Geneva, Switzerland) and Unicaja Foundation (Malaga, Spain), and several private collections in Spain, France, Russia and Mexico. His best-known book is Tokyo Blur.