David Arribas is a freelance photographer based in Madrid. Interested in documentary report on anthropological and social issues, he seeks to document the life forms of the environment that interest and inspire him. Currently, he is dedicated to the realization of long-term photographic works related to social and human taboos.
Below, we talked to him about his career and inspirations:
I am inspired by situations that happen in my day-to-day and that affect my personal life. One of the things we learn when we study photography is that we portray what is close to us. I do just that, I look for what is close to me and I project it into an idea and that idea in an essay. For example, ‘Scars’, my report on the abuse of greyhounds to hunt in Spain, I decided to do it when one day, on my way home, I saw how a greyhound jumped from the car in front of me and ran towards the highway. Something very intense must had made that dog jump out of the window of a moving car and run on a road full of cars speeding by. In that moment I thought I wanted to understand what was the reason that had pushed that greyhound to risk his life in that extreme way.
The relationship with the media is hard, because to do long-term work you need a lot of time to be able to develop it, and the media are more interested in immediacy. With the difficulties of being able to make a living from photography and continue working on projects that require a lot of dedication and effort.
I am currently developing a work on suicide and its influence on the rest of society. I wonder why it is a taboo subject, about which we are uncomfortable talking, and above all, reflecting. The silence that prevails on suicide in the media and the need to create a national plan to prevent it.
The complexity of the past year has made me approach photography in a slower way, thinking more about what I do and how I do it. I think the situation we have had to live through with the pandemic has put a lot of things to the test and has made me reflect a lot on where I want my work to go.
I intend to make a book and an exhibition of my first photo essay on the punk movement, Ansia/Anxiety, now that I have enough material collected since 2014. I find it very interesting to take on the challenge of making a book, I think it's a very rewarding experience for the future.
