Simón Brand’s work explores the interplay between collective behaviour and the solitary anomaly, using a distant, elevated gaze to reveal how crowds arrange themselves when nothing is asked of them.
Simon Brand photographs collective behaviour — what people do when nobody is asking anything of them, and how that arranges itself when you are far enough away to see it whole.
He works from above: cliff paths, church steps, staircases cut into rock, a wall at the edge of a harbour. Always a long lens. It is the distance a director takes when he is blocking a scene, and it does to a beach what it does to a set — bodies stop being people you might talk to and become positions, intervals, weight distributed across a surface. Nobody poses. Nobody looks back. Nothing is arranged.
What holds his attention is not the pattern but the thing that fails to join it. A phone held up in a crowd of a hundred people who are not holding anything. A lifeguard chair with no lifeguard. A swimmer who has gone out so far she is alone in the frame. The crowd is the sentence; the anomaly is where it means something.
Ferragosto was made on the coast of Sicily in the week when the whole country stops. That was where Brand found the work. It is not what the work is about.
Simón Brand fotografía el comportamiento colectivo: lo que hacen las personas cuando nadie les pide nada, y cómo eso se organiza por sí solo cuando se observa desde la distancia suficiente para verlo completo.
Trabaja desde lo alto: senderos sobre acantilados, escalinatas de iglesias, escaleras talladas en la roca, un muro al borde de un puerto. Siempre con teleobjetivo. Es la distancia que toma un director cuando marca una escena, y le hace a una playa lo mismo que a un set: los cuerpos dejan de ser personas con las que uno podría hablar y se convierten en posiciones, intervalos, peso distribuido sobre una superficie. Nadie posa. Nadie devuelve la mirada. Nada está dispuesto.
Lo que retiene su atención no es el patrón, sino aquello que no logra integrarse a él. Un teléfono en alto en medio de una multitud de cien personas que no sostienen nada. Una silla de salvavidas sin salvavidas. Una nadadora que se ha alejado tanto que queda sola en el encuadre. La multitud es la frase; la anomalía es donde esta adquiere sentido.
Ferragosto fue realizada en la costa de Sicilia durante la semana en que todo el país se detiene. Fue allí donde Brand encontró la obra. No es de eso de lo que trata la obra.
-
Changing Room-Sant'Elia, 2026View more details -
One Cell Phone-Cala Zingaro, 2026View more details
-
Splash-Cala Zingaro, 2026View more details
Simón Brand is a film and television director with over two decades of experience, recognised with five Grammy nominations, three MTV Awards and several Cannes Lions. His work includes the feature films Unknown and Paraíso Travel and the Netflix series James. Alongside film, he develops a photographic practice; Ferragosto, his first exhibited series, was shown in Bogotá in 2026. He is presently represented by Beatriz Esguerra Art.