La Velocidad de Escape - Alex Llovet

“Escape velocity” is the minimum initial speed needed by an object in order to escape the gravitational influence of an astronomical body and continue to move without making an additional propulsive effort.

Alex Llovet once again looks at his closest surroundings, stopping this time to examine how beings and objects strive for freedom. In his own words: “Everything tends to flee from that which conditions its freedom. I understand freedom as the ability to make decisions, an essential quality to define the nature of things or, in other words, one’s identity. I thus talk about speed but also about time and distance, since speed is no more than the time it takes to go a certain distance. And I choose to run away from a linear narrative, jumping between events that occurred in millions of years ago and others yet to come, between such remote places as the universe and others as close as home. And, along this process, I realize that we live caught between two times, and none of them belongs to us, tirelessly moving in the space that opens in between. The past reminds us of whom we think we are, while the future acts as a surface on which we project who we wish we would become. Past and future: the two pillars on whom we build our identity. And in this moving back and forth, we chase after our own velocity of escape, sometimes consciously, sometimes out of sheer survival instinct. We escape through our acts and through our imagination. We escape from the unknown, from the incomprehensible, from that which frightens us. We escape from pain, from guilt, from memory. We escape from an idea, from a destination, from expectation. We escape from the illusion of time in order to catch the present, the only place where we can aspire to be really free.”

Awards:
– Finalist Best Photography Book PHOTOESPAÑA 2020.

Press:–
American Suburb X, by Brad Feuerhelm “The escape velocity is similar to the way a beautifully discordant violin sounds played in an open space from the edge of a distant tree line in the forest at the end of autumn.“