Iker Aizkorbe Agirre, Aretxabaleta (1976)

Ever since I was a child, and by natural instinct, my curiosity for nature has fascinated me, to such an extent that everything related to it was, at that time, something "playful". Books, documentaries (I highlight "Man and the Earth" by Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente), any walk through forests or mountains.... all served to feed my curiosity and to learn more and more about the environment around me.

Painting and drawing also accompanied me since I was able to draw on any surface. Drawings, paint, colour... were an attraction that, on days when I couldn't go out to enjoy nature, kept me entertained. 

Both, nature and painting, merge with photography and, nowadays, it is in it where I find a way of escape and enjoyment. The freedom I feel, camera in hand, and surrounded by nature, evades me from the problems and stresses in which we are, almost inevitably, immersed nowadays. When I put my eye to the viewfinder and try to create an image, I have nothing but the picture I want to take in mind, and the freedom that moment gives me is like nothing else.

I started photographing back in 2009, when a camera came into my hands as a gift. Until then I had never had one, mostly because of the "fear" of not being able to take control of it; so many little buttons "scared me". But once I had my camera in hand, and after learning how to use it, the evolutionary curve depended on me. In a self-taught way, and with the odd training course, I have been evolving in this world that has trapped me. Constant practice has been decisive to get to handle the camera almost intuitively.

Nowadays I still enjoy photography like a child jumping over a mud puddle. I have several projects in mind that, in time, will come to light. In the meantime I am making my way, without putting pressure on myself but pushing myself to the maximum, so that the fruits will be, at least for me, as pleasurable as when I was a child painting and enjoying nature.