Beyond Singular Authorship

Discover the work of Ibai Alvarez

Ibai Etxezarraga Alvarez was born in 1985 in Bedia, a small village in the Basque Country, and now lives in Bilbao. His relationship with photography has been intuitive rather than defined by a single turning point. Though family albums and analogue cameras were part of his youth, he only began photographing with intent in 2012, two years after buying his first camera, following his studies in architecture.

Photography became a way to explore questions architecture couldn’t—challenging norms, embracing disorder, and constructing new perspectives. Between 2012 and 2019, Alvarez's practice evolved instinctively, with a solo trip to China proving pivotal. In 2020, encouraged by photographer Ricky Dávila, he revisited his archive, uncovering a coherent vision. By 2021–2022, Alvarez approached his work with greater reflection, giving shape to long-standing ideas.

What or who has influenced your style of photography? Are there any artists or experiences that have shaped your vision?

Three key influences have shaped my photography.

As a child, I was fascinated by the animal world, devouring books and documentaries. Figures like George Schaller and Dian Fossey deeply impacted me—their patient, immersive approach to wildlife taught me that photography isn’t just about observing the other but recognizing oneself in the environment, ultimately leading to the self-portrait.

While studying architecture, I discovered Edgar Anderson’s Plants, Man and Life, which explored the overlooked margins of human landscapes. His interdisciplinary vision—where biology, culture, and ecology intersect—reinforced my belief that beauty, or even ugliness, emerges when we embrace the forgotten and unexpected.

Lastly, James Benning’s films 11 x 14 and One Way Boogie Woogie influenced my concept of photographic elongation—stretching an image beyond its frame into a continuous present. Inspired by Barthes' punctum, I seek to challenge the confines of traditional framing, allowing absences and context to shape the visual discourse. 

Tell us about a photo/photos you’re proud of.

Among my archive’s fetish photographs is an image found in the abandoned Kössler Ibérica factory. Amidst the remnants of industrial activity, I discovered a slide on Agfachrome RS 100 film, dated 24 FEB. 1989, with the name Jose Manuel Alcorta inscribed. Whether this was the photographer’s name remains unknown, but its ambiguity challenges traditional notions of authorship, echoing Benjamin’s idea of the loss of aura in reproduction.

When exposed to light, the image reveals a yellow turbine with green details, precisely framed against a white lime wall—simple, direct, yet carrying an eerie silence. This absence of context invites dialogue between object, photographer, and viewer, questioning the authority of representation.

As Yi-Fu Tuan suggests in humanist geography, exploration—like photography—is inseparable from emotion and perception. This image, in its anonymity and poetic charge, embodies that tension, a lesson I always carry in my work.

What is the most difficult aspect of photographing people from other cultures in your experience?

I believe that the most complex aspect of documentary portraiture of people from other cultures is managing the tension between representation and recognition. While the former directs the scene from a dominant unilateral position, the latter makes this possible in true reciprocity. The former dérive from an infatuation with the exotic, while the latter appeals to the curiosity inherent to human beings. This duality places photographer and photographer in a common ground that the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty would define as 'the intersection of seeing and being seen', displacing the traditional relationship between subject and object present in documentary photography. It is only by managing this dual tension that I feel I can articulate a dialogue where the other –or the other– and I form part of the same scene without renouncing the inherent particularities of a genuine gaze. 

However, as I pointed out in bringing Diane Fossey to the table, this idea of recognising oneself in the other is not a task to be underestimated. I believe it requires a sincere introspective (-self) approach, which, in addition to serving as an exercise in awareness, will determine how we look outwards (hetero-). In this respect, Campany and Wolukau-Wanambwa, in the essay "Indeterminacy: Thoughts on Time, The Image and Race(ism)", stated that 'visual ethics also involves reflecting on our desire to look'. Moreover, the assumption of this link between looking and desiring validates the bi-directionality of 'seeing and being seen'. Only if one abandons the authority of the camera and makes oneself available as the means and end of the other's desire can there be that fascinating communion that dilutes the frontier between 'you-me', the magic of turning the portrait into a self-portrait. 

“My interest in the margins, the peripheral, the popular, the non-normative, the invisible, the involuntary, or the (dis)order is the same here and there. For me, photography occupies no other territory than helping explore these fields and feeding reflection and debate about them. So, I never photograph anything I do not consider a discovery or anything I do not truly identify with. When someone observes from a sincere interest, everything is part of the same thing. Even if everything seems strange, nothing is foreign.”

What are the visual triggers that compel you to take pictures while out shooting?

Walking to see is my ultimate visual trigger. I embrace the unexpected, letting my *dérive* guide me through diverse environments. This often leads me to the margins—geographical, human, and social—seeking spaces rich in latent emotionality, poised between forgetfulness and re-actualization. This practice is both playful and rebellious, a serious game of discovery that challenges the spectacle, repetition, and visual consumerism. It fosters a liminal, furtive, and anti-hierarchical reality, where any scene that disrupts the norm becomes a tool to destabilize absolute narratives. I often think of Quinn in *City of Glass* from Paul Auster’s *New York Trilogy*—a writer-turned-detective wandering the city, obsessively trailing Peter Stillman. In his search, he questions perception itself: *Did Peter see the same trees? If a tree was not a tree, what was it?* Similarly, the photographer who surrenders to movement becomes part of his own enigma—the more he observes, the more he dissolves into the image he pursues.

What is next for you? Are you working on any series or any upcoming exhibitions?

I am working on shaping the photography publishing project "Fluctuations: A Speculative Dérive Between the Sublime and the Grotesque," although it will not be a typical photography publication. I am interested in the book being consistent with my understanding and experience of photography. That is why the idea is to structure a narrative where photography acts as a catalyst to explore and inquire more freely, drawing on the text, cross-references, graphic material from different authors, or, why not, the work and knowledge of other photographers.

Under the umbrella of this speculative dérive that is Fluctuations, I can combine many of the themes and/or concerns that interest me and, if necessary, serialise them to address a more significant number of issues as if it were a living cartography of my thinking.

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