A free spirit

“When I was small, I used to get excited when I heard the click of my father’s camera. Whenever he wasn’t looking, I would grab it and play with it. That camera is always present in all of my childhood memories”, Abraham remembers. Many years later, a camera is still his trusty travel companion, and photography is an emotion, a refuge, “the biggest high and the greatest fear”. 

In spite of the fact that photography was his passion, Abraham decided to take a degree in Marine Science in Vigo. But after graduating, he couldn’t find a job, so he moved to Barcelona and started working as a labourer on a building site. “As I worked, I started studying photography, and little by little jobs came up, until I was able devote myself to that alone”. But one day he grew tired of being a mere observer and not capturing any of his own feelings with the jobs he was commissioned to do.

It was during this period that he moved to Mallorca, after a relationship that caused more uncertainty than certainty in him. “A friend offered me a job in the Cousteau Foundation as an underwater photographer in Cabrera, and I said yes. Living in Colonia de Sant Jordi for a winter was a new starting point for me. A time to reassess and put my thoughts and emotions in order”, he confesses.

Later on, he worked for Palma City Council as an environmental technician, combining this work with his vital moment as a photographer, when he ceased to be a mere onlooker and became a creator. “For me the game changer was when I understood that photography is not just a language in which I decide to capture only what I see, but that I have the desire to use it as a form of discourse, to speak to it. First you learn to speak, and when you know how to talk, you start to say what you really want”, says Abraham. “As a photographer, there comes a time when you feel fascinated by everything you see, with such a huge input of energy, of images and of beauty that more than capturing, you need to cultivate, to start to create your own language”.

After this process of personal transformation, one day street art came into Abraham’s life. “About four years ago Marina Molada (a photographer and artist) told me she would like to work with me. At first I wasn’t too sure, but after returning from a trip to Senegal we met up to do a piece together in Son Gotleu and from then on, I was hooked. Street art gives me equilibrium and a really good vibe”. 

Two worlds co-exist within Abraham. “In my personal projects, I’m very dark and I always stay inside that gloom, while these pieces in the street are my light. 

He says that people are very grateful when they pass by and see him working - “Some of them have even brought me a beer”. But the best thing is “when, after some time, you go back to the place where you left your artwork and people remember you”, he says, recalling the most beautiful anecdote he has experienced with street art. “It was in Son Gotleu; a north African woman came by, and she was crying because she said that she hadn’t read the Quran at all since leaving her country. She was deeply moved, and so was I”.

Abraham does street art because it makes him feel free. “I don’t[...]

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