THE RANDOM SERIES

The Random Series is a project that proposes a particular photographic exercise to be repeated in different cities (Berlin, Rome and Madrid). The series constitute a highly unusual approach to photography, to the city, and to the photographer himself. During his stay in each city, Tornero photographed his daily activities intensely and instinctively, accumulating a series of images that would provide the raw material for the final digital collages included in the volume. Curiosity and instinct prevailed in his approach to photography –and to the city–, in a combination of flâneur, Japanese tourist (obsessed with recording everything), and infant, taking in chaotic information unconsciously, without processing it, free of all conventionalism. As if seeing it all for the first time.

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In the process of creating these unsettling collages, Tornero used a glitch in a software that was not programmed to sew together apparently unrelated images. Ignorant of the parameters of cutting and pasting that the program was going to follow, he let the unexpected take the lead and mark the rhythm of the series. As we can see, the final result is largely left to chance.

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In the book (The Random Series -berliner trato, romananzo & madrileño trip- edited by RM), this approach is expanded and intensified. First of all, Carlos Fernández-Pello’s text is itself a collage, which also –in a process parallel to that of the creation of the images– has been manipulated, translated, and mercilessly retranslated into different languages by Google Translate. As a result, as in the case of the images, we find a multitude of exaggerated and fortuitous syntactical tangles that make any conventional reading impossible, warning us perhaps to pay special attention to the places to which our own language does not reach. The page layout has also been done randomly and, before being bound, the signatures were shuffled again, so that we might speak of a deconstructed book, each copy of which is practically unique.