Javier Campano embarked on his photography career in the mid-1970s, when his first photos were published in the Nueva Lente magazine. He was also working as a freelance photographer for the Triunfo magazine and had his first solo show at the Photocentro School (Madrid, 1979). His work is a continuous, coherent series of photos that are always in urban settings and of the apparently trivial: nooks and crannies and snapshots of his everyday life, where all the details and the point of view are brimming with melancholy and loneliness; photos where a laid table, a lamp, a façade or curtains are used to reflect on the depth of things.

Javier Campano returned in his work to the idea of the traditional traveller, not a tourist, for whom time must stand still in each photo. Travelling does not need to involve catching planes, crossing oceans or going to exotic places: you can be a traveller in your own city. In fact, Madrid, a city that he has explored and in whose time and space he has immersed himself, letting himself be caught up in the details of the everyday, is one of his favourite themes. In this vein, he has also produced photo reports on Paris, New York, Lisbon, Seville, Tangiers and Buenos Aires; however, and going against the grain, in those cities he did not search for the details of monuments and the well-known tourist landmarks, but rather the marks of living, where he looked for the small things which often are overlooked.

Campano has had solo shows at Valencia University (1991); the European Institute of Design (Cagliari, Italy, 1993); the Pablo Serrano Museum (Zaragoza, 2005); and Jaume I University (Castellón de la Plana, 2010) among other venues. ‘Hotel Midday’, a retrospective of his work, was held at the Reina Sofía in 2004.

Isabel Tejeda