AFTERGLOW II

There is a medical condition that an ophthalmologist (or commonly known nowadays as an Eye MD) call an afterglow or afterimage. This is a retained image in the field of vision that one gets after staring long enough into a scene, especially one that is of a high-contrast picture or a scene depicted in monochrome. Do you remember the reversed image of Jesus Christ printed on cardboard? When you stop looking into it, and then stare on a blank wall, you see an afterglow.

An afterglow is a retained vision in the retina; a glimpse of the past that seems to have hung on to one’s senses; a visual image that is embedded somehow in one’s memory. In reality, medical science has not really understood why or how this happens.

The 2nd one-man-show of Rafa Rod is entitled AFTERGLOW specifically because the images are exactly that – afterglow of his visual experiences that cannot be translated any other way except through his photographic art. The essence of his works are based on the latent images in his memory, in his past, that seemed to linger on and reveal themselves by manifesting as snippets of vision, glimpses of untold stories or fragments of ideas.

AFTERGLOW is a collection of twenty art works. The photographs are printed on fine art archival paper.

Rafa has elevated his photographic art by mastering the use of monochrome; he has dealt with the female form as a sole subject or incorporated into the mixed media works mainly inspired by European art themes. His subject matter involve the female nude, scenes of Paris, Barcelona and Dali-esque themes which are found in his expressions of surrealism, nudism and vintage art (like the use of century old glass negatives in the series Camera Obscura). In essence, the series AFTERGLOW is his first true mixed-media exhibit.