LUIS VENEGAS

A long-awaited contributor today, I’m delighted to welcome to the Pineapple “family” Luis Venegas – editor, creative director, publisher – who I’m sure many of you know. Enjoy this selection of his portfolio and get a little behind-the-scenes insight through this interview.

Could we start with some background information about you? Where you grow up, where you based, how did you get interested in arts?

I was born in the North of Spain and grew up in a town in the suburbs of Barcelona. I went to public school and as a child I loved comic books, specially Marvel’s superheroes. The mid-late 80s was a golden age for Marvel and they had a huge influence on me, lately I’ve realized very often how I shot people or how I compose a layout of my publications is slightly based on those pages that I devoured as a child. I also loved TV, specially Dynasty and The Golden Girls. I still love all those things. At the same time I loved reading heavy books, going to exhibitions, etc… I don’t know, my family is a very great middle class family with no particular tradition of being interested on those, for some mysterious reason I was. Now I live in Madrid.

Is there a personal connection between you and what you are hoping to achieve through your images?

Of course, always, everything I do is deeply personal, I think is the same feeling for everybody else trying to do creative things, right?

For being such strong and intimate images, how is the relationship with your subjects built?

They’re always very nice relationships based on mutual trust and the excitement of taking photos. Sometimes we’re friends before the pics, sometimes after the pics and sometimes we won’t meet ever again but keep a nice contact through social media.

What do you think, what makes a person a good model?

In general I’d say being open to try things and have fun being in front of the camera. I also thing the same person can be a great model in front of a photographer and maybe less good working with somebody else… I mean, after all it’s the connection between the people involved in the shoot what usually makes the good pictures and models shine.

In photography, what do you think it takes to succeed recently?

Define success. For me a very “unknown” photographer taking photos that are personally rewarding is success. A mega-famous photographer shooting big productions and earning lots of money is also success. In both cases I’d like to think it takes having a personal point of view and the determination to make things happen.

Creating a newspaper or publication requires a wide range of knowledge. Do you do everything alone or are there things you leave to others?

I do almost everything: I think of the contents, contact the contributors, we discuss ideas and make them happen, I also design the rough layouts, deal with the advertisers, the printing process, the distribution and the promotion. I manage all that, all those very different and particular teams. For the technical graphic design that it takes to have a file ready to be properly printed I’ve always worked with the best graphic design studio called Setanta. I’m based in Madrid and they are in Barcelona and even that distance has always worked in our favor.