Domestika Diaries: Verónica Cerna

The conceptual photographer Verónica Cerna shares her creative routine and describes how her profession has adapted to lockdown

Pictures, by definition, require the presence of two people: the photographer and their subject. So restrictions like those imposed in the wake of Coronavirus, which oblige us to maintain distances between one another and avoid moving from one place to another, can complicate or even stop the work of a photographer.

Verónica Cerna, photographer and cofounder of the audiovisual studio BAF, whose work has been recognized in the International Photography Awards and The Photo Phore, explains to us in this installment of Domestika Diaries how her creative process as a photographer has changed during the current situation. You can see the video below:

Despite the fact that her work was effectively paralyzed during the first months of confinement, Verónica Cerna has viewed this period as a creative challenge and an opportunity to conceive new ways of working. This photographer, whose work has been published in magazines such as Musée Magazine, Shots Magazine, Better Photography y Revista Pecado [Guilty Pleasures Magazine], decided to dedicate all her attention to the post-production of images that had previously been put to one side. By doing so, she also took the opportunity to look at her projects through new eyes, and dedicate more time to treating her photographs as if they were pictorial portraits.

Over the passage of time, the lockdown measures began to relax and Verónica began to gradually recover her professional activity, taking photos for publicity, television and for her own conceptual projects. Although she usually creates this type of work externally, she refused to resign herself to stopping their production. With a solution as simple as a floor in her photography studio, she was able to achieve artistic results without going outside.

For Verónica Cerna, it is important to not spend too long separated from her art; she believes images are mediums which enable us to absorb what we struggle to process and understand the context of the world we are living. In the current situation, this is especially important.

If you want to explore your imagination with Verónica Cerna or go deeper into techniques of illumination and post-production to create conceptual photos, don’t miss her online course ‘Conceptual portrait photography'.

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