Thinking Outside The Box

Showcasing the boundless creativity of Spanish-born photographer Eugenio Recuenco, the travelling art exhibition 365° arrives in Bangkok for a three-month run. Bruce Scott takes a closer look at this year in review… one day at a time.

- Bruce Scott

In 2018, when acclaimed photographer Eugenio Recuenco finally completed his 365° project, he was 50 years old. The title of the project, which he had begun eight years earlier, derives from the fact that there were to be 365 images in the series, each corresponding to a different day of the calendar year.

Taken as a whole, these elaborately staged art photos are like an impressionistic chronicle of the first five decades of Recuenco’s own life, as each one somehow corresponds to a situation, remembrance, fascination or historic event that is of some significance to the artist. However, on another level, these arresting images can be viewed as a fantastic exercise in pure creativity, as each is entirely unique despite having the same dimensions (110cm by 132cm), an identical camera position and, most noticeably, a shared backdrop; a three-walled, one-windowed cubicle that truly forced the photographer to “think outside the box”.

“It was a very difficult decision to make,” admits Recuenco as we begin our virtual interview – he in his hometown of Madrid, and me in Bangkok. Of course, he can’t help but laugh when he reflects on the absurdity of creating a photo series with such a rigid set of self-imposed guidelines. “As a photographer, it was the moment in which I lost my freedom, deciding this is the position of the camera, and this is the set.”