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Barcelona
1966. His first project began during the early 90s when he
photographed Barcelona’s rapidly disappearing Barrio Xino. The
photos were made into his first book, entitled 08001 (1999) with
texts by Cesar Muñoz y
Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. In 1994 he won a Fotopres grant
from La Caixa Foundation to study at the International Center of
Photography in New York. He began collaboration on the Spanish
newspaper La Vanguardia’s Magazine, publishing photo-reportages
such as 55 DAYS IN BELGRADE (1998), CIRQUE DU SOLEIL (1999) and
UNDER THE BRIDGE (1995), a portrait of an evicted gipsy
family condemned to live under a bridge for eight months for non-payment
of rent.
His
documentary-style vision became popular in the advertising world
and he worked on graphic campaigns for Martini, Telefonica’s
Movistar, among others, winning various advertising awards.
In 2000 while doing a Masters in documentary at the Pompeu
Fabra University in Barcelona, he met director Joaquim Jordá, who
gave him the chance to work as camera operator on his documentary
DE NIÑOS. The following year he made his first documentary in
Cuba, SE TRANCÓ EL DOMINO (2003). A second grant from La Caixa
Foundation took him to Argentina to shoot a country in the midst
of a corruption crisis. His
report was called RECUPEREMOS EL TRUEKE (2003)
(BRING BACK BARTERING).
Incensed
by the growing speculation of property development in Barcelona,
he exhibited an audio-visual at the Centre de Cultura Contemporànea
in Barcelona, entitled D´OBLITS (2004), the culmination of three
years’ work
capturing in photo everything that politicians and corrupt mayors
and constructors were destroying. The pictures are silent and for
the first time, peopleless.
Through Yamuna, a foundation working with abandoned mothers
and children in Madagascar, he photographed their daily activities
in the school-farm, MADAGASCAR(2006). This was the starting point
for his current project, LESSONS
(2006), with the central theme being education. In 2006 he also
travelled to MUMBAI where he photographed a Manos Unidas project
to set up the Girls’ City. Afterwards he went to DAKAR (2006)
where he photographed another project, created by Madame Cissé,
called THE CITY OF WOMEN.
His
latest work, AFRICAN REQUEST(2007) is a documentary about the
World Social Forum which took place in Nairobi, Kenya in January
this year. The film intermingles the moving image with the static.
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