Martina Matencio and the Light of Isolation: Inside the Barcelona home studio fuelling her creativity during lockdown

Barcelona-based photographer Martina Matencio has built a career from seeing beauty in the body. Her images are known for their tenderness and a quiet truthfulness that often feels like a whisper more than a declaration. When the city went still and the outside world closed, her universe narrowed to a home studio and two close friends. Yet in that limited space, her creativity expanded.

During lockdown, she found herself rediscovering the familiar. She uncovered new rituals, new subjects and even new parts of herself. What felt like confinement became a space for deep observation, a place to understand what creativity looks like when everything else pauses.

“This has given me the opportunity to see myself from another angle. Another Martina.”

A home that became a studio of self

The apartment she shares has turned into a sanctuary filled with light. Morning sunlight. Afternoon sunlight. The soft glow that arrives just before night. Here, photography remains her oxygen. The space offers room to experiment, to reflect and to notice what usually rushes past.

“My studio is a quiet place and I feel good here. It is part of myself.”

Her days follow small rituals. Breakfast for three. Time alone. Exercise. Coffee in the sun. Work when inspiration arrives. She describes them as almost identical, yet each carries a different internal shift. Stillness did not numb her creativity. It sharpened it.

Creation as a way of living

For Matencio, making images is not a step on a to-do list. It is essential. Even in the quiet, even in uncertainty, the urge remains.

“I think I could not live without taking photos. It is my oxygen.”

The studio life is not new for her, but the people in it have changed the work. Confined with two artists and her boyfriend, she found unexpected new muses. For the first time, she photographed a man’s body with a sense of curiosity rather than distance. The shift surprised her, and it made her realize how much can transform in small spaces.

Finding inspiration in slowness

With more time to feel and reflect, she has been reading. She has been paying attention to what rises inside when the world outside is silent. She has been studying the parts of herself that once went unnoticed. The slower tempo has brought a new clarity.

“It has been an exploring path in many ways. The unknown sometimes scares us, but it is also the springboard to keep on living.”

The next chapter

She dreams of the sea. The taste of salt. A hammock. A return to the places that breathe freedom into her work: Cadaqués, Menorca. And when the world fully opens again, she hopes it does so gently.

For now, a new project keeps her anchored. A book of photographs and fragments she has written over the years, including during this unusual moment in time.

Matencio’s story is not one of dramatic reinvention. It is about recognizing that creativity does not disappear when life changes. It adapts. It takes on a new shape. It finds the light that remains.

From the Series “A Look Inside” originally posted during the pandemic.