Several years ago, Quintana went through a depressive period. “Without really understanding why, I started compulsively taking photos,” he says, adding that he found the act of paying attention to reality, of fixing his gaze on moments of discovery, therapeutic. “It allowed me to tolerate a reality that, without being reinterpreted through an aesthetic lens, was very hard for me to cope with. Capturing everything that mixed the strange with the beautiful helped me recover. The bear feels comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time. It’s a bittersweet moment.”