Priti baiks
José Castrellón is, above all, a portraitist. But one who is not satisfied with capturing facial expressions or poses. He understands that we are what surrounds us. His models, along with their distinctive belongings, appear in their own vital milieus: open spaces, the streets, interiors… Or else they do not appear at all, because at times Castrellón shows us only the spaces. To photograph them means to make portraits of absent beings.
Though formally sleek and precise, his pictures are frontal, intuitive, direct, and totally lack digital or scenic manipulations. The human condition is much too rich and dense to disrupt it –he seems to suggest.
More than individual portraits, this artist is interested in capturing the extraordinary, personal ways in which a collective sensibility is made manifest. That is why he prefers to work in thematic series. He tries to establish meaningful relations, in order to delve into the lifestyles and mores of specific groups or communities, like the heavy metal subculture within the Kuna population, or the festivity preparations of Calle Abajo and Calle Arriba, the two rival sectors of the legendary Las Tablas Carnival.
Priti baiks is a series of portraits of men who display tons of creative ingenuity and dedicate a good amount of their meager resources to decorate and equip their humble bicycles, an integral part of their own identity. Castrellón is an enthusiastic traveler who has searched for them in streets and alleys of towns and cities all over Panama. Each encounter is an opportunity to start a conversation that may lead to a portrait of the proud cyclist.
These portraits could be read as a sign of the Latin-American macho idiosyncrasy. Some men venerate their cars (or, by default, their bikes) and seem to care more for them than their own families, perhaps as a way to sublimate myriad economic and social frustrations. This reading may be valid, but lame. At the heart of this admirable series of photographs are the countless modes of expression featured in the bicycles. Differing a great deal from one another, they nonetheless seem linked by a vibrant eclecticism and a profusion of elements, patterns and colors inherited from the rich Afro-Caribbean culture, and fused with God knows how many more.
The term priti baiks is an evident parody of ‘pretty bikes’. However, priti ¬– widely used among young urban Panamanians– does not exactly mean ‘pretty’. Something is priti when it possesses an ingenio
