Tomás Sánchez
Photography as A Transcendental Process
By Carol Damian
Respected as one of the finest artists to emerge out of Cuba’s renowned landscape tradition, Tomás
Sánchez has also mastered the art of photography as a natural transition from painting in his exploration
of nature and its many moods. For the past seven years, Sánchez has used the camera to capture the
beauty of the coast of Costa Rica, where he resides, and record sea and sky, sand and shore, with the eyes
of an artist – there is little doubt that these are rendered with as much care as his detailed landscapes.
Now light becomes the key element in a different way; not through the dappled leaves of tropical forests
or as calm meditations on a serene lake that made his paintings so unique, but as reflections and key
elements in his aesthetic response to familiar surroundings. The paintings of Sánchez have long been
personal expressions of a transcendental process that is both meditative and serene, often reverberating
with an unworldly ascetic association – made especially poignant by the presence of a lone figure. They
are reminiscent of the Romantic tradition that speaks to the incomprehensible immensity of the universe.
His photographs continue this exploration of nature as metaphorical for transcendental process and pure
beauty.
Each photograph captures the landscape in its most primordial: horizontal divisions evoke the separation
of earth and sky, or sea from cloud and sky. There are luminous fields of dense, quiet color that seem to
generate the primal energies of light. Vertical rock formations balance the sweeping expanses of sand
and sky, and diagonals introduce breaking waves rolling toward shore. Mastering the aesthetic approach
developed by early photographers, like Stieglitz, Strand, Weston and others, who understood the ability of
the camera to record exact images with rich texture and detail to interpret nature and man while never
losing contact with reality, Sánchez also recognizes the power of the photograph as symbol or metaphor,
as the recognizable subject becomes charged with meaning by his vision. Each image in this exhibition
goes beyond the mere representation of land, sea and sky to contain emotional significance – much
informed by his personal philosophy of life. The photograph is transformative, replete with inner
meaning.
Pioneer photographer Minor White has defined “the photograph as a mirage and the camera as a
metamorphosing machine: To get from the tangible to the intangible… a photographer must free himself
of the tyranny of the visual facts… to work the mirror with a memory…to pursue poetic truth.”i A visitor
to the shore sees pebbles or a rock, Sánchez and his camera capture more. Extraordinary patterns emerge
as the pebbles become frosting in the surf and bubbles in the waves bring new textures to light. The
famous rock formation, Roca Bruja, on Costa Rica’s Guanacaste coast, stands like a sentinel rising out of
the sea and has long been a favorite for photographers (and surfers). Sánchez transforms its mysterious
visage (called the Witch’s Rock because legend says a witch lives there) into a monstrous creature framed
by the light of the sky. He must have waited hours to experience those particular effects, when the
horizontal expanse of the sea meets the light of the sky at just the right moment to illuminate the rock’s
secrecies.
Tomás Sánchez demonstrates that the dialectical structures of seemingly rival modes of painting and
photography can cohabit with each other and share the marvels of technical finesse. Sánchez never
abandons the eye of a painter in creating photographs of the same remarkable sensitivity to his
environment and desire to capture nature’s timeless and classical beauty.
i
Beaumont Newhall, The History of Photography (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1964) 199.
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