Original subtitles

The Aragonese photographer Víctor Lax began to photograph

weddings without much conviction.

A few years later, he was already considered

a reference in this field, for images like

the one he once made, in the least

thought-out place for some boyfriends.

I remember a kind of hillside, I mean,

with nothing there, as the gentlemen began to

leave viscera on the ground.

And in a matter of minutes, the vultures

began to land.

One, two, three, up to, I don't know,

maybe a hundred vultures.

It was like a movie, right?

I ask the couple to stand face to

face, to relax a lot.

The vultures don't move, they don't get upset.

You place the camera, you get ready, compositively

everything starts to work, the light is also

in place, you press the button, and that's

it, the photo.

There are images that have a curious origin.

In August 2013, Víctor Lax was photographing a

wedding in St. Petersburg between a Spanish boyfriend

and a Russian girlfriend.

At a certain moment, one of the guests

approached him and said to his ear, Hey,

I know where you would take an incredible

wedding photo.

I also hesitated and said, where?

And he showed me the mobile phone in

which a field or a hill appeared, in

which a lot of vultures appeared, right?

Of course, I stayed with it, and I

continued with the family photos, and later, when

it was over, the light turned on, and

I said, where is that?

And he told me, in Huesca, right?

And it stays a little in your retina,

knowing that there you have an interesting place

perhaps to photograph something.

First, it was a little to inform me

of what I could find there.

We already saw things on the internet, on

YouTube.

The man was an incredible character in which

they had already told me that he distributed

meat, or veal, in which all the vultures

looked like little chickens that follow the one

who feeds them.

And I called him, right?

And I told him who he was, that

he was a photographer from Zaragoza, and that

if there was any problem, that I would

go with a couple of boyfriends there.

I remember that the answer was, boyfriends?

I say, yes, let's go with some boyfriends

and I would like to know if it

is possible, right?

And he told me, please come.

And then it was the mission, right?

To find or look for a partner who

was willing to go to a place as

crazy as that, right?

In short, there was a couple who had

contacted me a long time ago.

It was a couple that I could not

photograph because I was busy for that date.

And we called him again to tell him

that we had agreed to take some pictures

with him.

And the next summer at the wedding, he

told us that if we wanted to take

those pictures with him.

And that's when we met Víctor in person

and the first time he took some pictures

with us.

Here in Zaragoza, at the Expo, exactly.

He showed us the photos and the truth

is that we were delighted.

They told us who they were as people

and what their hobbies were.

And he saw that we liked adventure, he

saw that we liked nature.

Four or five months after the Expo photos,

I was in English class at a language

school and I saw that he had several

calls from Víctor.

And I told him what I had in

mind, some photos in which I was going

to see vultures and it was a field

that was going to be completely full of

vultures.

I was a little surprised, but I was

so delighted that Víctor was going to take

some pictures of me dressed as a bride

that I said, yes, yes, yes.

I jumped into the adventure and I said,

great.

I picked him up directly in Zaragoza with

my car.

We arrived in the small town, a very

small, very small town.

He came to receive us, the town committee,

in which they explained to us the photos,

where they were going to be taken, where

the vultures were, where they were going to

land, and so on.

I had never been with a vulture.

The vultures that I had seen were either

simply flying or they were in magazines.

Of course, we were dressed for the street

and we had to put on the bridal

suit, a January 29th with an incredible cold,

of course, here in the area.

And we said, now where do we dress?

And they opened the door for us, a

very small bird.

And nothing, they got dressed and we went

to take pictures with the vultures.

We saw that the men in charge of

the dining room were starting to throw pieces

of chicken, meat, skeletons, animals, everything around.

The truth is that anyone, when they look

up at the sky and see, they can

find the vultures and others, I see them

very high up and I see them very

small, very small.

But of course, when you are already seeing

that they are getting closer, they are getting

closer to the ground, and when they land

and you see them very close, they are

very big.

And I remember that the couple were walking

little by little, they were placed in the

center more or less.

So at that moment it was when Victor

told us, well, be as natural as possible,

look, hug, but above all close your eyes.

And the men there told us, don't worry,

they don't do anything.

I remember he told me, they are blind,

they don't see.

That didn't reassure me at all.

When I asked them to close their eyes,

it was to transmit a serenity and a

peace, a calmness, compared to what, for example,

the vultures could transmit.

Just the opposite of what was transmitted at

weddings, they were happy and ate perdiz.

And suddenly you started to hear the noise

of the vultures eating and you already thought,

there are no longer two or three.

And of course, with your eyes closed, you

could hear the vultures.

You could feel the pull of the dress,

that a vulture was posing there.

And when you open your eye and see

how the vultures are fighting, you said, my

God, where have I gotten myself into?

But on the other hand, you said, this

is going to be cool.

It was an accumulation of emotions, of adrenaline,

of saying, how is this going to turn

out?

There was a trunk next to it, and

I remember that they left a vulture in

the trunk area above.

And I remember how quickly a vulture climbed

up, which is the vulture in the photo,

which gives weight to the photo too.

It looks like it's looking at the couple.

But we spent a long time waiting for

the perfect photo, right?

I already knew that what I had there

was really unique, totally different from what I

had seen in wedding photography in a long

time.

And when we saw the photos, it was

something tremendous.

It was very beautiful, the truth.

I presented it to a contest called Fearless

Photographers.

Translated into Spanish, they are limitless photographers, super

crazy photographers, or something like that.

And that photo ran all over the world,

from China to New York, passing through Cádiz,

I mean, it went everywhere.

People, my friends, ask me, how do you

have this photo?

What have you done?

What program, what mobile application have you used

to make this montage?

That photo, along with others, was one of

the photos that helped me or that helped

my name to go out a little more

around the world and that photographers from a

large part of the world would know my

name and start to be a little more

interested in the work, not only for that

photo, but for what was behind it.

Víctor Lax was born and grew up in

Alcolea de Zinca, a town in the province

of Huesca.

As a child, in the middle of that

rural environment, he saw how his father photographed

and recorded his family.

However, his passion for photography did not start

until he moved to Zaragoza to study image

and sound.

I remember that my father, well, as a

child, and it is something that I thank

him from the bottom of my heart, that

he documented my life, from when I was

a little boy to when I grew up,

because it is what I have left and

it is what we humans have left when

we grow up.

Well, moments of my childhood, in which you

see life in my town, in life with

my brother, with my whole family.

I remember perfectly images from when I was

little when I started to walk, how I

caught the little chicks, or how I went

out with my grandfather on a swing, surrounded

by other grandmothers of the town.

It's like deep Spain, those little black grandmothers

seeing how the child starts to walk.

Also in an apple field there with my

parents.

When I started in image and sound, first

my idea was to learn video.

I just didn't think about photography at any

time and the love for photography comes by

pure chance, without knowing how or why, you

get to a dark room where a red

light comes on and you see the photo

going up.

It's like magic, you say, wow, the photo.

It was a blank paper, now it's a

photo I took half an hour ago.

And that was the spark that suddenly comes

on.

And the spark came on again when I

entered a newspaper, like Becario, Diario Equipo...

It doesn't exist anymore.

It was the little brother of the Aragón

newspaper.

And this newspaper was only about sports.

The head of photography was Jaime Galindo and

that's where I learned.

I remember that Jaime gave me a package

of 7 or 8 rolls and told me,

until you fill them, don't go back to

the newspaper.

And you go with the rolls and you

tell your story, whatever comes to your mind.

Jaime corrected my work daily, he told me

how to relate to the people I was

going to photograph and how to photograph.

The sports newspaper period was over.

I remember that I was almost every Thursday

going to the Aragón newspaper to ask for

a job.

Rogelio Ayepuz was the head of the photography

section of the Aragón newspaper and he constantly

bothered him to open a gap for me

and finally Rogelio came to say that if

a guy called Víctor Lasch came and they

said he wasn't there, but he knew that

if they gave me the opportunity, he knew

that I was going to take advantage of

it and finally there was a photograph and

he called me.

I said, this afternoon I'm there, Rogelio.

Víctor was a very cheerful guy, above all

restless and very curious.

He asked everything, learned everything, tried everything.

The progress he made was very fast.

The doors of the Aragón newspaper opened for

me.

He knew that I was a very bad

photographer.

The first cover is a disaster.

It is a photo of a closed door

pre-printed by Benemérita.

And the second cover, I remember that it

was already better.

It was a success.

In the old town of Zaragoza there is

a Moroccan citizen who dies due to an

account adjustment.

I photographed that and without thinking who was

who, how, or anything.

I remember that in the newspaper they told

me, hey, what's your cover?

I said, wow, a cover?

And suddenly, when they were telling me that

the one who was crying was the brother

of the deceased.

My soul shrinks and I think, wow, I

don't want that photo to be on the

cover.

I go to Lola Ester, the sub-director,

and I tell her, I asked Lola if

we could change the photo of the cover.

And she said, why?

I am very sorry that the brother is

crying.

And Lola Ester tells me, if you think

that, you are not worth for this profession.

Those words stayed with me, and I said,

okay, on the cover.

In the photography section we work for the

newspaper, for all the sections.

In fact, he did sports, sculpture, which was

a section that he liked a lot, concerts,

he loved all this.

So, Víctor, where he developed very well was

all this type of photos, of music festivals,

those macro-festivals that there were, Los Monegros.

Then he also worked in a disco in

Fraga.

In fact, here in Brazil, as a joke,

we called him Digilax.

In that type of photos, Víctor, that's where

you developed your type of photography the most.

I was working at Periódico Aragón for about

two and a half years, almost three years.

What allowed me, first, to be in contact

with photographers day and night.

Of course, being in contact with photographers makes

you notice how they move, how they are

working, how they address a president, or how

they address a football player.

You learn that.

But the stages end.

The stage of Periódico Aragón ended.

I was also collaborating with Agencia F several

months with them.

I remember that one of the photos that

had the most strength was the image I

captured of the former director of the Civil

Guard, Luis Roldán.

The former director of the Civil Guard has

signed this morning his definitive letter of freedom.

He has been in prison for 15 years

for a sentence of 31 years for the

crimes of embezzlement, coercion, fraud, falsification and against

public property.

The court has proven that he was illicitly

enriched with the commissions paid to him by

the construction companies that made barracks of the

Civil Guard in the 80s and early 90s.

His case provoked a huge political and social

upheaval in the last legislature of Felipe González.

That day was the first day of his

conditional freedom.

Agencia F told me that they would like

me to be there all morning.

At this point the street was Camino de

las Torres and in a given moment Luis

Roldán had to pass and it was a

huge street full of people that you would

find like a needle in a haystack.

So, it was time to eat, I ate

and I passed again.

And suddenly, walking, I saw a man and

I thought it was him.

So, I started to run and I turned

around and I saw his face.

I thought it was a photographer.

The next day, at 7 o'clock in

the morning I went down to the kiosk

and I saw that the whole kiosk was

my photo.

At that moment I started to cry.

The ABC, El País, El Mundo, Periódico de

Aragón, all of them free, I told the

kiosk that I wanted to take all of

them home.

Víctor Lacks continued to collaborate as a freelancer

for other media while on weekends he worked

at the well-known discotheque Florida 135 as

a photographer as well as as a waiter.

There he met his current partner Erika Viernes.

Erika came into my life at the moment

when the press stage is shaking.

The crisis in Spain 2009-2010 is coming.

Everything is going to hell.

Spain is once again the country in the

eurozone where unemployment rises the most.

According to Eurostat unemployment in August has increased

to 11.3% The number of unemployed

has also risen in the whole eurozone to

7.5%. Spain is leading the list of

male and female unemployment as well as the

list of young people.

I was working for a free newspaper and

I was told that I was included in

an employment regulation file.

I didn't even know it was that.

Everything came a little bit over because I

didn't have continuity because there was no possibility

to work in other newspapers because things were

pretty bad.

Everything came together.

The national crisis and the media crisis.

The media didn't know if to publish on

paper or digital.

And I didn't know.

So, out of necessity, you started to work

on weddings.

I started with weddings thanks to a colleague

who opened the doors for me, Pedro Etura.

Pedro Etura, at that time, needed people to

help him as assistants or as second photographers.

He invited me to help him.

The first thing I told him was how

much he paid me because I got in

for money.

But, photographically, I thought it was a lot.

I had a pretty wrong opinion about what

you had to do as a wedding photographer.

In fact, I rejected several friends who called

me to do their weddings because I was

a press photographer.

Of course, a press photographer, how could I

do weddings?

I was careful.

The weddings were just starting and, well, we

did the same things but, interestingly, the profit

was 20 times more.

And, besides, the bad vibes in the press

at the weddings were just the opposite.

Shortly after starting to photograph weddings, Víctor Lacks

ends his stage as a photojournalist and starts

his own business.

His wife, Érika, a professional architect, is also

affected by the ravages of the economic crisis

and decides to join the new business adventure.

I got hooked and I liked it.

It wasn't like architecture, but it was a

creative work where I could express my creativity.

I started to abandon the first style as

a wedding photographer I had.

It was a style more than what was

done in the past and I started to

think that wedding photography had no limits.

As time passed, he started to see that

he had a lot more freedom than what

he was offered to work in a newspaper.

He could do whatever he wanted and, generally,

the grooms were happy.

When I started to see the wedding photography,

I liked it a lot because it was

very different.

I mean, I saw that I had assimilated

everything that had been assimilated from the press

photography and there were weddings that were worked

as if it were a photojournalistic work.

The press helps you to develop, so to

speak, a sixth sense, to know when you

bother, to know when you can put yourself

in the kitchen, to anticipate, to know that

something is going to happen or you intuit

or assume that something is going to happen.

Much of the new vision came from that,

from a documentary style, so it seemed that

all the pieces Because, curiously, I saw that

in the United States that was also what

worked and where we were going, where we

believed that there was a market niche and

we believed that it was going to work

and how it was.

It worked because all the couples accepted this

new style super happy.

A photographer, Susana Barberá, wrote to me and

told me, kid, you have an incredible job,

how don't you introduce yourself to Fearless?

And I say, what?

Fearless Photographers is an association of wedding photographers

where they try to take wedding photography to

the extreme.

She selected 15 of my photos and I

remember that in that first round that I

sent, in that first contest, I won 5

awards and then that opened the doors for

me.

I never thought that weddings would give me

the opportunity to travel and, second, the most

important thing, to have my own style or

to give it a focus that had not

been done until now.

In 2014 the same thing happened, I was

also named one of the 10 best photographers.

And in 2015 I wanted the same.

And instead of thinking that the job would

give me that, I thought just the opposite,

to start making photos to get titles.

And that was the debacle, that was a

disaster because my photos were a recording of

a multitude of influences and that bothered me

a lot and Erika saw it.

In 2015, despite the fact that it was

the year we got married and that I

had to be the happiest professionally, it was

a very complicated year for Víctor because he

had an identity crisis, he became obsessed with

being in that top 10 or top 5

worldwide.

And he said, it's over, we're not going

to think about that, we're going to think

a lot about who we are, what's best

for us and we're going to take that

to the extreme.

We're going to have a year of trial

and error.

You're going to choose what you want and

if we see that it doesn't work, we'll

go back to this point, but better in

another way.

And if the awards come, they come, and

if they don't, they don't.

When I forgot about all the awards, when

I didn't think about them, was when in

2016 I was named the photographer of the

year, the photographers named me the best wedding

photographer in the world.

It was incredible, everything changed.

Our reporter Ana Polo has been with the

considered best wedding photographer in the world, the

Aragonese Víctor Lax.

We're here, under this bridge.

What would you do here?

If I were a girlfriend, there's no boyfriend,

but we imagine it.

I would tell you to sit over there.

Well, I went out, I think even in

La Sopa.

Seen with perspective, apart from the pressure we

had initially, it was a turning point for

our work.

The vital moment is a carousel of emotions.

Everything goes very fast.

Sometimes I finish a wedding in Marbella, I'm

taking a plane and suddenly I'm giving a

seminar in Brazil.

This is constantly happening.

Initially, it was unthinkable that a photographer from

Zaragoza would go to Madrid to take a

wedding, or to Valencia.

But of course, they called him to take

that wedding, but it was not only Madrid,

to the Canary Islands, to South America.

The weddings are

all the same, but the truth is that

each wedding is unique for each couple, and

that requires a great degree of responsibility.

I believe that photography is the reflection of

people, of photographers.

If people at their wedding are not funny,

there will obviously not be funny photos.

If people are humorous, obviously that will be

reflected.

In the backstage, there are many details that

later help a lot to understand that wedding,

to tell.

These are details that normally you do not

notice.

Moments that sometimes even the couples are aware

that they are happening and that you have

to capture it because you know it will

not happen again.

One of the pictures of Victor that caught

my attention is the one of the can,

in which the light and the situation stand

out a lot.

I think you have to do it with

a lot of intention, you have to be

very clear what you want to reflect at

that moment.

Victor, apart from the frames, plays a lot

with the shadows, in which maybe the face

is not seen to the character, but he

is giving you another type of information of

something that is happening there.

Some of my favorite photos perhaps come from

the over-effort that it has cost to

get them.

To say, I want to place myself at

that point of the church, for example, in

the pulpit, to get a greater perspective, to

get the whole corridor.

And suddenly I see that the two heads

of the projected shadow, both the father and

the bride, and at the same time I

praying, saying, God, let this come out.

And it is one of my favorite photos

that defines my work a little bit.

Everyone is used to seeing when a couple

leaves a church or a ceremony, how they

throw petals, rice or whatever.

And one of the things is to always

look at a different perspective.

That photo was taken in a small town

in Teruel, Crete.

And in fact, of course, in the villages,

people are still very open and photographers are

still important people.

And that's where the adventure comes a little

bit.

Sometimes calling the doors, the grandmother came out,

hey, we are the photographers for tomorrow's wedding,

do you mind if we go up there

tomorrow?

Of course, no problem.

The grandmother was over there and I wanted

to get the grandmother in the shot, like

someone who is looking at what possibly lived

in that same church with a person who

was no longer at home.

And when the grandmother saw that I was

trying to photograph her, I did something like

going to the bathroom to see if the

grandmother came out as a good grandmother of

the town, to see what was cooking in

the town square.

And then the grooms come out, the grandmother

gets in there, and there came out the

photo.

That's one of my favorites too.

In 2018 and 2019, Víctor Lacks was awarded

as the best wedding photographer in the world

again.

He is currently a reference for many professionals

in this sector who attend his seminars, also

interested in giving a different meaning to their

work.

The concept of a wedding report It is

no longer a photo report to be an

artistic object, that is, an object that is

only being taken by that photographer.

I had to reinvent myself and to this

day I say thanks to this blessed crisis

because I really enjoy what I do.

We can travel, we can include our son

Leo in all those trips and work with

Víctor.

In the end, we do all family trips.

For me, the moment when I left the

press, what I had achieved with so much

effort, that suddenly practically everything collapsed.

But hey, I was still a photographer.

After all, I am a photographer and it

is what I feel and what I will

always do.

Wedding photography opened me as a photographer, developed

me as a photographer and allowed me, without

a doubt, to be the photographer I am.