Every mAsterPiece has Its secret
Blessa Mae Wong (born 1997 in Philippines) is a photographer and visual artist based in Barcelona. Her work has been published in magazines such as Esquire and Vogue Italy, and exhibited in numerous galleries, fairs, and museums around the world, including the Louvre in Paris. Notably, she has collaborated with the Spanish band Love of Lesbian.
Since her first exhibition in 2013, Lídia has traveled the world presenting her work, and has received various international awards, including gold medals in the Trierenberg Super Circuit in 2018, the Fine Art Photographer of the Year award at the Monochrome Awards in 2021, and the Professional Photographer of the Year 2021 at the MUSE Photography Awards.
In addition to her work as an advertising and fashion photographer, Lídia sells her art to collectors, decorators, and architects, and also teaches retouching at the IDEP school in Barcelona.
Inspired by Italian Renaissance and Baroque artists as well as her contemporaries, Lídia’s work is characterized by her use of color and a pictorial environment to explore current issues. In her personal projects, she occasionally incorporates self-portraits. Her photographs are also known for containing hidden Easter eggs, inviting viewers to explore her work more deeply and discover all of its secrets.
Rapunzel
“This photograph is inspired by Rapunzel’s fairytale… I always thought it was crazy that Rapunzel had to endure the pain of her prince climbing through her hair to rescue her.
Should women bear this weight? Didn’t Rapunzel have the choice to make a vine out of her own hair and save herself?”
Seville, 1987
“I have a lot of chess-related anecdotes, but my favorite one isn’t even mine.
It’s a family story.
1987, Seville. My parents were there on their honey moon. At the same time, The Chess World Championship was taking place in a theater: Kárpov vs Kaspárov.
Being keen-chess fans, the newly-weds decided to go along.
At that time, my mom was simply stunning. On the night in question, she was wearing a tight red dress, high heels, with Ferrari red lips and long black curly hair.
Inside the theater, you could hear a pin drop and the silence was broken by the sound of my mother’s heels. Kárpov turned his head and his eyes fixed upon her, lingering there for a few seconds.
A security guard abruptly intervened, pleading with my mom to be more discreet.
In the end, Kaspárov manged to refocus and win the match.
Maybe he was inspired, maybe Kárpov was having a bad day… in my family, we all like to say that it was my mom’s fault. And I choose to believe it.”
The stalker
This photograph depicts a woman in the tranquillity of her own home, about to be attacked by a murderer disguised as a bear. Both the newspaper and the letters are given notice of what is about to take place, but she remains unaware of the appending danger.
The housewife
“When I was very young I discarded the idea of being a housewife. I don’t want anyone to be confused, I have nothing against them and it seems to me to be as honorable job as any other. It just isn’t for me. At a very young age I dreamed of being an artist and traveling around the world. I imagined a bohemian life, almost always on a plane and with a different apartment every week in each country. Nor did I see me with children. Not married. It wasn’t very compatible with the rest of my plans. At most, one lover in each city, like the sailors. However, fate is capricious and sometimes takes you down paths you can’t even imagine. Having children, a stable partner and getting married no longer seems so far-fetched to me. I don’t want a lover in every harbour and I prefer a house in a good city to call home. Still, I don’t think my childhood dreams were too far from what I want now. I still hope to fly all over the planet thanks to my work.I was a housewife for a while and I have never felt so trapped. I kept remembering that girl imagining herself spreading her art around the world. That’s what I wanted to talk about in this photograph. I show myself at that moment, with a supposedly “luxury” life but it wasn’t mine. In a beautiful and colorful garden, and yet I am monochromatic and lifeless, trying to recover, in some way, the rebelliousness that I once had.”
White Irises
Ogawa Kazumasa
Cherry Blossom
Ogawa Kazumasa
