Interview with Toni Ricart from Spain

I am Toni Ricart, a photographer, graphic designer, illustrator, and amateur musician based in Barcelona, Spain. In 1985 I founded "TR Multistudio", my own graphic design studio.

In 2009 I created "multistudioBOOKS", an independent publishing house specialising in photography, art, graphics, illustration, and poetry. Since 2012 I have managed the artistic legacy of photographer Marcel Gir.

I have not studied photography in particular. I studied Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona.

I remember my first photograph taken with an intention. It was a closed ice cream stand on a beach, in winter. I shot it with a small Kodak Instamatic camera.

Hasselblad 500c for analog. Canon EOS 5D Mark IV for all the rest.

My only target to achieve with photography is just to simply fulfill my creative needs.

It was when the great Catalan artist Pla-Narbona told me that the portrait I did of him was the best one ever done.

Over the years I have learned to look at my surroundings differently. I am inspired by people, but also by a shadow cast on the ground, or by the contrast formed by the branches of a tree against the light of the sky. I am inspired by shapes and light.

Simplicity, Graphic balance, and Emotion.

I think my projects have very defined phases. From the first idea to the end. Winning an award is undoubtedly the best way to close a project. Thank you for this opportunity to be a winner of the London Photography Awards.

The photograph that I have presented is part of a collection of black and white portraits that I made of people linked to culture in the city of Barcelona.

I wanted to exhibit this particular portrait also in color because I am interested in the chromatism of the scene, from the skin to the clothes, but especially that ocher light that envelops everything.

Winning an award is discovering that what you do reaches people, communicates, and conveys a message. It reduces the uncertainty you always have about whether your work has any meaning.

Don't get carried away by fashions and trends. They are short-lived and disappear. Do not condition your work to what this or that person will say. Just believe in what you are doing.

I think this is my natural state. As the great pianist Glenn Gould used to say: "The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity"