RETRATOS MANUALES

It is true that in one's sight and in their face is the quintessence. But one can train their gaze in order to deceive others. However, hands talk openly. At least the hands that Manuel Iglesias portrays with his camera: they are not the hands that write, or that paint, or that sculpt, or that cook, they are not hands that leave a mark, even though they definitely do, instead they are the hands in which somehow the trace of words is printed, of pigments, of stone, of flour. Because of this it is possible to read someone's life in these hands without the need to use palmistry. And because the photographer tries to look beyond the hand, its gesture, its action as a sign where what is important is not the what but the how: it is a way of standing out, of grabbing, of holding, of resting, which gives the measurements of the depth of the gaze bettwen than the deepnees. Because of this, the fact that all these hands belongs to important people might be the less important thing. What there is in common ends up being more important than what is different, and that is how we catch the ceramist red-handed in the same way that we catch the cooker, or how the cyclist unveils his passion for music and the musician his passion for climbing, while we find that the climber and the sculptor are both lovesick for the stone. Along with Manuel Iglesias, the athletic idol, the political leader, the famous singer, the awarded artist, familiar things come about, mainly because the photographer has to be firstly an expert in closeness, an specialist is not just shaking hands but also in distances. In the virtual era, these Retratos Manuales (handmade portraits) are imposed in the certainty of the material, of what comes from the mind and heart.