About
Lucas Garcete (Ciudad del Este, 2000) is a Spanish poet and visual artist born in Paraguay.
In the literary field, he has been a finalist in poetry competitions, including the 34th Loewe Poetry Prize and the 8th Jovellanos International Poetry Prize (Ediciones Nobel, 2020). He has contributed to Spanish-American literary magazines such as Fábula, Babab, and Letralia, among others, and his poems have been included in anthologies such as Sombra del aire, presented at the Zócalo International Book Fair (Mexico, 2022). Some of his texts have been translated into Russian by the poet Dmitri Kuzmín for the magazine Banderas (flagi.media).
As a visual artist, he develops conceptual black-and-white photographic work, where silhouette and digital manipulation function as central languages. He uses photography as a starting point, but not as an end in itself, employing images to construct symbolic scenes in which identity is depersonalized and the body ceases to be an individual and becomes a sign. His work is characterized by a melancholic atmosphere and strong aesthetic cohesion, and he has received several international awards, including the 8th edition of the MonoVisions Photography Awards (London, 2024) for his series Hymns to the Night, inspired by the work of the same name by the poet Novalis.
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Garcete develops his work within the Dark Art movement, focusing his practice on digitally manipulated photography. His style is defined by the meticulous use of silhouettes constructed using backlighting techniques that simplify the composition and eliminate the individual identity of the figures. These bodies—originally friends, family members, or strangers portrayed casually or in deliberate poses—are digitally transformed into symbols inserted into desolate settings: ruined architecture, nighttime landscapes, bare trees, and spaces that oscillate between the everyday and the dreamlike.
Using a strictly monochromatic palette of deep grays and blacks, he constructs nocturnal atmospheres illuminated by dim sources—mainly the moon or distant lights—that intensify the chiaroscuro. This visual treatment, influenced both by German expressionist cinema and contemporary aesthetics such as the video game Limbo, does not seek a decorative effect, but rather a formal reduction that allows the image to function as an open metaphor.
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His imagery draws on diverse references: Greek mythology, the Romantic tradition—reflected in Hymns to the Night—, the surrealism of René Magritte —visible in works such as Ode to Freedom— and the precision of Auguste Edouart, the nineteenth-century master of silhouette portraiture. While Edouart preserved the identity of his models, Garcete digitally decomposes it to transform it into a universal sign.
It also incorporates elements of the Gothic tradition—the ominous, ruin, decadence—and a dark lyricism that dialogues with the work of Czech symbolist František Kobliha. Photographic manipulation is at the heart of his creative process: extreme contrast adjustments, image superimposition, alteration of tones and textures, and the integration of physical and digital scenographic elements. In this way, photography ceases to be documentary and becomes a space for symbolic construction.
Recurring figures such as plague doctors, demons, beetles, and metamorphic creatures do not seek to provoke, but rather to embody a poetics of the ominous. This approach also reveals the influence of Lotte Reiniger, using silhouettes as an autonomous language with narrative capacity, situated between the disturbing and the poetic.
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Death is the central theme of his work and a constant obsession. It is not approached as an end or a natural event, but as an unknowable phenomenon that escapes rational understanding. To represent the unrepresentable, Garcete resorts to ambivalent iconography and humanized mythologies, as in the series Heralds of the Plague, where death takes the form of an allegorical messenger wrapped in an aesthetic that combines the sinister and the sublime.
His work offers neither answers nor definitive narratives. Each image functions as a threshold, a space for contemplation and doubt where the human, the monstrous, and the sacred coexist without hierarchy. Night, far from being a refuge or a mere absence of light, becomes a territory of revelation, a place where the image does not explain, but rather interrogates.
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2025
TIFA (Tokyo International Foto Awards) – Subcategory Winner, Fine Art (Collage), Bronze, Non-Professional: Himnos a la noche
ND Awards – 3rd Place, Fine Art (Photomanipulation), Series (Professional): Himnos a la noche
IPA (International Photography Awards) – Honorable Mention, Fine Art (Collage): Himnos a la noche
reFocus Awards – World Photo Annual – Honorable Mention, Conceptual, Entry Level Non-Professional: Himnos a la noche
Monochrome Photography Awards – Honorable Mention, Professional Photomanipulation Category: Amor cósmico
2024
MonoVisions Photography Awards 8ª edition – Black & White Series of the Year: Himnos a la noche
Monochrome Photography Awards – 3rd Prize, Amateur Photomanipulation: Oda a la libertad
Monochrome Photography Awards – Honorable Mention, Amateur Photomanipulation: La ternura del terror
IPA (International Photography Awards) – Honorable Mention, Special (Other): Himnos a la noche
ND Awards – Honorable Mention, Fine Art (Conceptual, Series): Himnos a la noche
Black & White Spider Awards – Nominee, Amateur, Silhouette: Oda a la libertad
2023
Color Awards, Dodho Magazine – Best Images: Epitafio para la luna
III Certamen Punto Final, Zaragoza – Finalista: Jugando a las damas con la muerte
2021
VIII Premio Internacional de Poesía Jovellanos – Finalista: Cuadernos Rubio
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2025
Monochrome Photography Awards '24 – Oda a la libertad (Mar, 2025)
2023
Dodho Magazine – Colors, Best Photographers of the Year – Epitafio para la luna (dic 2023)
2022
Sombra del Aire, Antología – Claustrofobia del féretro (México, oct 2022)
Revista Almiar n.º 120 – Desiertos de la luz, Margen Cero (España, ene–feb 2022)
2021
El mejor poema del mundo – Cuadernos Rubio (Ediciones Nobel, España, jun 2021)
Rosa Butler, Antología (Ediciones viveLibro, España, 2021)
Revista Literaria Fábula nº 49/50 – Claustrofobia del féretro (Universidad de La Rioja, vol. 11, España, 2021)
Banderas (flagi.media) – Poemas traducidos al ruso por Dmitri Kuzmín (Rusia, jul 2021)
Revista Literaria Babab – Poemas de Lucas Garcete (España, ago 2021)
2019
Revista Letralia nº 352 – Cinco poemas de Lucas Garcete (Venezuela, dic 2019)
2018
Revista Letralia nº 337 – Cinco poemas de Lucas Garcete (Venezuela, sep 2018)