2023-09-14 14:55:03
Laia Abril (Barcelona, 1986) has been awarded the National Photography Prize, corresponding to the year 2023. The prize, awarded by the Ministry of Culture and Sports, is worth 30,000 euros. The jury awarded the prize “in recognition of a work of artistic research with extensive international experience.” “Laia Abril’s work collects information and documentation in different parts of the planet, concentrating on themes that are still current and that socially and politically structure discrimination, especially of women, as well as the individual and collective suffering that relegates certain people. , as an anonymous mass, on the margins of society,” the jury highlighted.
Florent, guitarist of Los Planetas, now solo: “If we artists join forces, the platforms will end”
Further
Laia April She is a transdisciplinary creator. Although the award given highlights her photographic work, the Barcelona-born author also uses text, video and sound as tools to convey her message. “I don’t romanticize photography as a medium, for me the stories are more important,” Laia Abril tells elDiario.es by telephone.
Last year there was almost absolute support from the photography sector for the jury’s ruling. The photographer Cristóbal Hara (Madrid, 1946) – finally – was the winner of the National Photography Award. His contribution to Spanish culture with a look that was already contemporary three decades ago was officially recognized within his vast career, both in work and in years. For this particular way of painting national folklore using a 35 mm camera, the prize was awarded to him first within the photography guild and years later by the Ministry of Culture.
For its part, Laia Abril’s work is structured in thematic trilogies, and addresses issues related to sexuality, the body, psychology and women’s rights with the aim of breaking social taboos about what is different and promoting empathy. Some of her best-known series are On Sexuality (About sexuality), On Eating Disorders (About eating disorders) o A History of Misogyny (A history of misogyny). He has published several books such as Thinspiration (autopublicado, 2012), Tediousphilia (Musée de l’Elysée, 2014) The Epilogue (Dewi Lewis, 2014), the latter recognized at the Paris Photo-Aperture First Book Award, Kassel PhotoBook Festival and PHotoEspaña Best Book Award. His work has been exhibited in various international exhibitions and is part of private and public collections such as those of the Musée de l’Elysée and the Fotomuseum Winterthur, the Regional Fund for Contemporary Art of France (FRAC) or the National Art Museum of Catalonia ( MNAC).
Perspective photography
Abril resides in Switzerland as she is a professor of Visual Narrative at the Lucerne University of Art and Design. The news of the award caught him on his way to Valencia for the opening of the exhibition On Healing in the gallery SET Espai d’Art. In addition to this exhibition, the author’s work is currently being exhibited at the CCCB in Barcelona (as part of the exhibition dedicated to Sade), at the Elysée Lausanne Museum and at the Center Pompidou in Paris. “I’m a little overwhelmed with emotion,” says Abril.
Of the 30 National Photography Awards awarded since 1994, only nine of these have been awarded to female photographers. One of these, from 2008, was shared by the photographic tandem Bleda y Rosa – María Bleda and José María Rosa – who until now were the youngest people to receive the award. Bleda was 40 years old when she was awarded. Laia Abril has been awarded in 2023 at the age of 37, thus becoming the youngest person to win a National Photography Award. “I guess it’s also good to mix it up, right? To people with long careers, who obviously deserve to be seen, and to younger people, also to encourage us,” says Abril.
Hysteria, rape, disorder
Laia Abril began her career in the world of advertising from which she began to realize that she wanted to tell stories visually. She then studied journalism, a training that underpins all of her work.
Abril’s documentary gaze dedicates many years to investigating basic social problems: misogyny, gender inequality, femicides and eating disorders are some of the themes that can be found in the work of the multi-award-winning creator. “I would love to be able to talk about abortion and rape in Madrid (…) it has never been shown there,” says Abril. The work she refers to is titled A History of Misogyny, Chapter One: On Abortion, research project that he presented in 2016 at Les Rencontres d’Arles, France. With it he won the Prix de la Photo Madame Figaro-Arles and the Fotopress Scholarship, among other awards and which, to date, in Spain has only been exhibited at the Foto Colectania Foundation in Barcelona.
“If I am invited to exhibit in a place where the situation is bad or something has happened that I think is important, it seems great to be able to revisit it and also see if it holds up, because the world is changing so much,” explains Abril. On Abortion He will soon travel to the United States where the right to legal abortion is suffering a notable setback in many states. It has been eight years since the publication of the first chapter of this work in April. Therefore, the author’s projects are not closed. “I wanted to have voices of trans people who were not allowed to have abortions and I didn’t get it. And it’s something I’m working on now,” the creator announces.
“It also helps me to have this long process to learn from each one of them and to create material because there is the exhibition, but each project has its book and then they come together. We go back forward, backward, we remake things, I add things and a bit of that organic point of being attentive to what is happening in the world, which I suppose comes from journalism,” says the recently awarded photographer.
#dont #romanticize #photography #care #stories