Rafael Cuevas’s work is a rigorous inquiry into analog photographic printing. From large-format capture to the timeless craft of the darkroom, each stage is methodically tested and refined to surface rich tonal structure and tactile detail—texture in the subject, the negative, and the print itself—“scratching the cornea.”

Around The Corner - 2025

Around the Corner uses rotational perspective to make flatness read as depth. From a fixed position, I create black‑and‑white diptychs by rotating the camera about forty‑five degrees between exposures, producing adjacent vanishing systems that act as a visual hinge. I select sites for their luminance structure, expose at a calibrated EI to place shadows predictably, and develop to a target CI for high acutance, texture, and deep printable blacks. Printing is iterative—split‑grade control, localized dodging/burning, and selenium toning—until the negative’s tonal potential resolves.

J Backwards - 2024

Selected as part of the group Show at Flux Factory ‘PROCESS’ curated by MaLo Sutra Fish, the call was requesting a complete hand approach to photography and a site specific piece - Governors Island. Rafael Cuevas chose to play with Castle Williams’s architecture. This diptych heightened tension by creating a false perspective by switching sides of the composition. Simultaneously, pivoting the camera to polar horizontal extremes yet from the same vertical axis, Cuevas designed an illusion of a square angle corner convincing the viewer of its existence despite this building being known for its roundness.

Requiem For My Mother - 2018

Requiem For My Mother is a color series reflecting upon iconography and faith. As a child, Cuevas’s mother would make him pray every single night before going to sleep. Images stuck, sounds, casted shadows.

A lifetime later, Cuevas revisited the depth of these intimate projected shadows and omnipresence through this vibrant color series. Insinuations are what is left of religious indoctrination.

The right hand side depicts concepts through one color and texture versus the other side illustrating its imposed characteristics. What most won’t see is that the left side of the picture is an overlay of the right side plus a second negative. 

Borrowing - 2018

Saturated colors, converging lines and composition balance are the elements which I concentrated most. Somewhere in the back of my mind, it kept screaming Rothko, Clyfford Still…

1982

Patti Smith and the Ramones were both playing weeknights at the CBGB, working pay phones were hard to find, we heard music from cassettes played on Walkmans and there where we, two kids doing our thing. Finding out who we wore.

1982 is a chapter book. Each chapter was all recorded in one day shoot. All the work is impromptu.