De Natura Libris

De Natura Libris is a contemplative photographic meditation on books as living objects. Rather than focusing solely on texts or authors, Álvaro Alejandro López turns his attention to the physical and emotional relationships that form between readers and the printed page. The series invites viewers to consider books not only as vessels of knowledge, but as tactile companions shaped by time, touch, and memory.

The project unfolds in dialogue with a constellation of writers from across cultures and generations. Their words and ideas resonate through the images, reinforcing the notion that reading is both solitary and shared. While the photographs remain visually restrained, they carry layers of meaning shaped by literature, philosophy, and personal memory. In this way, López bridges the abstract world of thought with the material presence of books, revealing how inner and outer landscapes intersect through acts of reading.

Traveling through a book, writing a book - both are a mysterious adventure. I don’t understand how the internet works. But I know how it is with the book. There is a strange secret in writing an reading - it can, with the mere twenty-five letters of the Slovene alphabet or whatever number of letters are in the alphabet of any other language, express the multifariousness of human life, and poems and stories can reach amazing fantasy landscapes. In an era of the global internet, literary art goes on creating its universal worlds, worlds of a most profuse heterogeneity. A simple invention called the alphabet enables us to browse an infinitely more fascinating network than one based on silicon crystals. And we know that with its help and without hurtling technology it is possible to travel, yes even fly around an infinite internet — the internet of our imagination.

Drago Jančar

L’écriture et la lecture sont les seules technologies qui nous animent de l’intérieur et qui prolongent les dispositions de notre cerveau. C’est sans doute pourquoi lire et écrire sont si déchirant et enlevant. Le livre ouvre tout grand l’espace sur notre corps à corps avec la réalité et ce mystérieux envol du soi que sont la poésie et la fiction. Notre fiction d’espèce est un livre.

Nicole Brossard

Cuando sentí que mi vista empezaba a declinar, decidí leer a la luz natural, sea la del sol cambiante según las épocas del año, sea la del gris obstinado que puede velar el cielo y sin embargo ilumina mejor que cualquier auxilio.

Recientemente, reducido a un lecho de convalecencia, acepté encender una lámpara. Vi, con espanto y admiración, que la luz eléctrica, al posarse sobre la página, borraba la letra impresa y dejaba el papel blanco a la espera de lo que pudiese proyectar la mirada de un ávido lector.

Edgardo Cozarinsky

De Natura Libris

Gallery