Filipino photographer, Miguel Nacianceno, shoots in a cool detached manner that adds another dimension to his subjects.
In Carnival, he explores the themes of nostalgia, beauty and emotional authenticity.
The surreal and manufactured place served as backdrops to real human emotion. Since carnivals almost always pack up and build some place else, I also felt like capturing that bit of transient quality to the place.
TOP TO BOTTOM, (from “Carnival Photography”), 2002
© Miguel Nacianceno
Visit his online portfolio to see more works.
Picture 3 - Nice pleasing image
I enjoy the idea to convey a connection to human emotion through a surreal and “manufactured” place a lot. I think carnivals etc. are so loaded with emotion anyway, just because they have so many negative and positive connotations having to do with family, being a child, and fears. I like the idea of a vacant carnival ride as it’s loaded with a eerie charge to me, and also a sadness. Visually I think the first two images could be pushed more as they very straightforward, with lots of other information surrounding, which I feel detracts from what it could be if it were positioned in a different or more dramatic way, emphasizing the emotion being portrayed. The last image is cropped more dramatically than the others, yet I feel the image is separated negatively by the weight at the bottom, and by the large areas of text. I think the idea of transience and “packing up and moving away” that comes with the idea of a carnival is very interesting as well; however, in the same respect I think this feeling could be pushed with more drama and range within the compositions.