Carlota Guerrero

The house I had before was much more impressive than this one. It had amazing windows but hardly any light, and that brought me down a lot. This apartment is much more modest, much smaller, but it has the most beautiful light in the world. All the plants died in my other place, but here when I eat fruit I can plant the seeds and watch new ones sprout.

I have no attachment to the material. I like my house to be comfortable and pleasant, to have good energy, but I don’t spend money on designer objects. We found half the furniture on the street, or got things on Wallapop out of necessity, or people have given us things. I do have some objects that are more like amulets, with their own charge of spiritual energy, but I’ve usually found them in markets as well, or there might be a painting by a friend, or the fruit of my own work.

I see the sun rise from my room and can watch the mountain as it lights up. I have a calm breakfast, go down to the park, get my car, and drive along the Ronda de Dalt to Hospitalet with classical music from Catalan National Radio at full blast. I drive fast along the ring roads. At that time nobody’s going the same way. I plan my day in the car, which ideas I’m going to work with. I take a lot of inspiration from that stretch. I get to the studio, work, dance a bit, then I usually come home for lunch and spend the rest of the day here.

They’re very different from each other. This apartment is miniature, it’s almost like a maquette. The ceilings are low, it’s focused on the details, all the objects are small. The studio is an enormous space, with three floors that are completely open and absolutely nothing there. When my family came from Andalusia, they all lived and worked in Hospitalet. I’ve picked up where they left off. I really like going to an industrial area and then coming back to a more family-oriented area.

Yes, in a way my home is my mother and the studio is my father. My home is like a mother that hugs me, full of little plants and small altars, and the other space is like going to paint on a giant canvas. This is a place for rest and introspection, the other is a space for total play.

Yes, but I’ve always thought that I’m able to do the work that I do with women because my father isn’t alive anymore. For a while I felt like my work was driven by the freedom that his death gave me. I grew up with the absence of any kind of suffocating masculinity. Naming that space after him is a way of giving him a space as well. The day that I shared it and got home that night, my sister called to tell me it was my father’s birthday. It was like a present for him.

I feel like my ambition isn’t the same as the ambition of cities like New York or Los Angeles. That anxious, capitalist drive doesn’t inspire me at all. I’m so nervous and unsettled that I need a peaceful space; I don’t need more stimuli. My head is already New York.

Not at all. I never know the year or month in which things have happened. I only contextualise my ideas in my emotions, inside my own body. I feel certain that this image has to be translated into a shot, and I won’t rest until I get it. I thank God that I still have the innocence to believe in my ideas. In truth, I’m afraid to start losing that with age, as you become more sensible.

I always intend for my images to be as atemporal as possible. I don’t want to add layers of complexity to the people I’m photographing. I’m interested in the essence; I want to go to the heart of the matter. If I add layers of meaning, the other will have to decipher a context that doesn’t interest me at all. That’s why I argue with stylists. I started doing fashion, but in reality I want to make human portraits, feminine portraits.

No, not at all. I feel sure that I’ll be doing what I’m doing for the rest of my life, although it wouldn’t scare me if that changed. I’m open to becoming a gardener.

It’s like it has nothing to do with me. I think it was Lola Flores who said, ‘Money burns in my hands’. I’ve inherited that from my father: money has to be spent. In reality I’m starting to save for the first time in my life, at the age of 31. But whenever I’ve made money, I’ve always had to spend it as quickly as possible because it’s an object that doesn’t sit well with me.

Completely the second. There are times when I have an idea and feel the need to research it and understand the references. Other times I feel the idea has so much visual force that it doesn’t even need half a concept because it just is, and that’s all.

For me it has a lot to do with visual language being a language in itself. Beauty, for me, has a depth that isn’t at all superficial. Images aren’t empty just because they don’t have a concept.

I think a lot about flowers, about God creating them, about fractals, repetition, patterns. Images can have extreme complexity, just like an orchid, which doesn’t have any other concept beyond itself.

Publishing my first book was really big. The public orgy I organised at Miami Basel with 40 people. I was so impressed by the idea becoming a reality that I definitely had to keep myself together. The intensity of the sex of all those people, and me with a baton trying to guide it. It made me wonder whether I might actually be more conservative than I thought! What I did for Playboy on Las Ramblas was also a big moment. Normally, anything that involves a live audience makes me feel more fulfilled, so Covid means that I’ve come to a bit of a standstill. I’m much more interested in the real moment than the image.

My feminine, creative essence. The same strength that I’ll use to create a baby one day is what moves me to create these images. It’s also my hyper-sensitivity. I’m so sensitive, and I get so emotional with beauty that I need to do something with that energy. Sometimes I can’t believe the normality with which some people go through life.

I think it’s because if we see another woman calmly undress, and that body has its unexpected twists, and we still see them as beautiful, it creates a feeling that our own body probably is too.

The same image always comes to mind: I remember sitting behind my desk at school, fantasising about standing up and taking all my clothes off, running around the class and jumping up on the teacher’s desk. With that in mind, I completely lost track of the class. Later on, a horrible feeling of guilt came over me.

Exactly. Things really clicked for me in my 20s, when I could finally actually do that—run into the Mediterranean completely naked. I felt like I’d finally killed the priest, I’d killed the father, I’d killed them all, and now I’d found my place.

I think I experience the matrix as something so corrupt that I need to create harmonious spaces with maximum peace. But, in fact, I’m a pure fighter. That’s why I had to start representing sexualised women as well, because it felt like a strange hypocrisy to only represent virginal women. Oddly enough, I’ve also found vulnerability in sexualised women. So in the end I come back to the same place.

I’m very confused by the pandemic. But the confusion is interesting, because having a new space is also bringing me to less explored places. I feel like a preadolescent again. Now I’m going to Mexico and will nourish myself with whatever the country offers me. It’s not very clear, to be honest, but I’m not worried. Not knowing is rather exciting.

I’m much more at peace. I feel more certain that I’m doing what I have to do. That certainty is expanding, and it’s never been better expressed, as I have a physical space now. I never stop being thankful that I can dedicate myself to my vocation. But now I’m thankful from a point of view of being able to take advantage of it, not sabotaging it; I can take what life has given me and run with it as best I can.