For the last two decades, Alfonso Ohnur has been saving the polaroids of his sessions. Images that captured the pose, the make-up, the light and the attitude that the photographer was looking for in each story and that speak of the uncertainty, the chance and the collective work behind analogue photography. Now, he compiles them in an exhibition called ‘Sin Filtros’.

‘Sin Filtros’ aims to reflect on genuine fashion photography, from the collective work prior to imagining a story to its final publication, passing through all the stages involved in the process until the perfect image is found. An exhibition that pays homage to the course of analogue photography, questions the sometimes dehumanising role of today’s digital tools and, above all, highlights the role of the women portrayed by Ohnur’s lens, stripping them of the role of muses and making them an active part of the creative process.

Onhur’s work is mainly based on painting and film, and explores analogue, digital and instantaneous analogue, digital and instant techniques. The photographer has collaborated with Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdales, Alexander McQueen, Cartier, Loewe, Marie Claire, Vogue, Glamour and more. In this exhibition, in addition to exhibiting his work, you can also enjoy interviews with key female profiles to understand the process of fashion in photography. Laura Ponte (model), Florance Reveillaud (stylist) and Chiti García (fashion editor) tell us their experiences and reflections, providing a holistic approach

Sin Filtros

Text: Leticia García

An instant that changes everything, that condenses the now but also evokes the past and the future. An instant that does not have to be perfect, but powerful and evocative. That is genuine fashion photography, a moment captured for eternity in which the right light, colour, pose and attitude come together organically. In times dominated by fragmentation, speed and the false perfection provided by technological tools, it is necessary to remember that photography is the trace of something alive, of an instant worked in a team, of a story narrated in an instant.

Sin filtros’ is precisely that, a journey of magical instants through the polaroids taken by Alfonso Ohnur over the last two decades, searching for that perfect conjunction, the starting point from which to begin to photograph with that uncertainty of the analogue that has annihilated the digital. Polaroids that document the work of an author who dynamited the conventions of Spanish photography by trying to tell cinematographic or even literary stories through his images, but which, above all, remind us that spontaneity, chance and collective work are necessary conditions for genuine fashion photography.

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But it is also a journey that dismantles the classic female role in images. The models, actresses or celebrities who star in Ohnur’s work transcend the traditional role of the muse to become an active part of the process. They don’t pose, they interpret, they interact, in snapshots that almost like photograms and in which the attitude and the small gestures almost miraculously captured are the ones that give meaning to the rest of the elements of the image. Here there are no preconceived ideas about beauty or fashion, quite the contrary; these polaroids are the result of a prior collective dialogue, verbal and non-verbal, between the photographer, the woman photographed, and all the women (stylists, make-up artists, publication directors) who intervene, contributing a common gaze to capture the perfect instant.

Sin filtros’ is the visual document of those endless sessions, of teams that connect, of scenes that happen by chance, of pioneering ideas, of risks taken, of a period in which fashion was just another character in the plot and not the whole plot, in which the model was much more than a face that could be made perfect through infinite retouching and in which the form was as or more important than the content. A journey for all those who still turn the pages of magazines and catalogues almost as a ritual, and want to discover how, when and why some of the most iconic images in fashion were created.