He exhibits in the land of his childhood, the sea of the island between mountains, pine trees and mists
Santa Lucía Fortress Interpretation Center
Nacho González Oramas was born in the capital of Gran Canaria but his parents had a family home in Santa Lucía Casco, near the palm grove of Sorrueda. That is why he learned to look at the sea in the island's interior since he was a child, when he got lost with his brothers among the mountains or next to the cliffs of the Fortress, which in addition to being a natural heritage have an important historical value linked to the time of the conquest. From this Thursday until the first week of June, the exhibition 'Mar de isla' by Nacho González Oramas can be seen at the Interpretation Center of La Fortaleza de Santa Lucía, who is proud “to exhibit my work next to this landscape that For me it has biographical and sentimental value.”
In the exhibition of black and white photographs you can see two landscapes of Santa Lucía: La Fortaleza and the Salinas de Tenefé. In another photo taken from Acusa, the Bentayga and Nublo appear imposing under the full summer moon. This photograph was used by ONCE as an image in a raffle to commemorate the declaration of Risco Caído as a UNESCO Heritage Site. There are also the Maspalomas Dunes under a sea of stars, on a night with a clear sky because “I took the photo during Covid, when the hotels were empty and there was no pollution from artificial light, thanks to a permit from the Cabildo to be able to circulate during the state of alarm and photograph those days of confinement.” Another landscape shows Inagua and the Pajonales pine forest invaded by haze. In another photo, the landscape that man helped create is also present, the twelve trees that look like one, that Antonio Luján planted near Juncalillo, the trees (one for each child that Antonio and Teodosia had) sleep under a sea of stars.
The journalist and writer Andrea Cabrera writes in the text that accompanies the exhibition that Nacho G. Oramas is “that meticulous, expected goldsmith, whose gaze is flooded with the Atlantic and whose work proudly disrupts the discourse of the uselessness of art; because there is little more fruitful than beauty, that which he claims in each of his photographs.
When he took his first photograph, Nacho G. Oramas did not imagine that he could make a living from this profession to which he has already dedicated 34 years of his life. His work is known throughout the world by 34.000 followers on Facebook or almost 6.500 on Instagram. “I feel privileged because, although I have worked hard, I started at a professional moment in which there was a gap, newspapers work with several photographers, and I have been able to make my career specializing in the world of culture, which has allowed us to meet a lot of people and experience a lot of the world.”
Among the moments that stand out is when he covered Michael Jackson's concert in Tenerife for the newspaper Canarias 7 "I spent several days to take the artist's arrival, the concert and the Jackson march, I sent most of the photos in the Jet Foil, passing the film to some passengers, I was able to send the cover photo through a special device that only the EFE agency had.” It so happened that the EFE photographer had a technical problem, and one of the images of Michael Jackson in Tenerife that went around the world was by Nacho González. Three decades later, Nacho González has specialized in portraying other, more natural stars, those that appear to illuminate the Nublo or the Bentayga. At the summit he has spent more than one early morning accompanied by his son or daughter, who monitor the appearance of stars. fleeting moments while the father moves the lens to capture the cliffs among a sea of clouds.
During the opening of the exhibition, the mayor of Santa Lucía de Tirajana, Francisco García, congratulated Nacho González Oramas because “this exhibition shows the professionalism of the author, whom I consider to be from our municipality because his family is from here, because "He has managed to capture the beauty of our island and, in addition, offers some images of La Fortaleza and the Salinas de Tenefé." The first mayor thanked the León y Castillo House Museum for promoting this exhibition and the La Fortaleza Interpretation Center "for bringing it closer to our neighbors and our visitors."
