Juli 2026

Interview by EIC Irina Rusinovich Kevin Pineda starts where most photographers stop: at the delete button.

The blurred shot, the misfire, the frame that never made the cut because it was too soft, too strange, or too honest — these are the images he works with. In *Fragmentia: Oculations of Reality*, he takes those rejected photographs and physically tears, folds, and manipulates them by hand, then mounts them in brushed stainless steel frames that throw your own reflection back at you while you look.

The exhibition ran at SPRUCE Gallery in Manila from May 22 to June 13, 2026, curated by Ric Gindap. The central idea, as Gindap puts it, is simple and a little unsettling: the rejected image might know something the polished one was trained to hide.

Pineda is not a photographer who only photographs. He studied architecture in London, apprenticed at a gallery in Rome that showed Tracey Emin and Anselm Kiefer, ran his own art space near the Colosseum for five years, built furniture in Tallinn, and shot fashion across Milan, Paris, New York, and Manila. All of that ends up in the work whether he intends it or not.

We sent him five questions. Here is what he said.