Alain Rojas Pastor. Vestigia, 2023. © Alain Rojas Pastor

Barcelona,

One more year, and this is three, the MAPFRE Foundation has launched the program KBr Flame together with different institutions dedicated to teaching photography in Barcelona: Idep, IEFC, Elisava, the Faculty of Design and Engineering and Serra i Abella. The objective of this initiative is to support the work of those who undertake a career linked to image after completing their training, facilitating the exhibition of some of their projects in the KBr space of the Catalan capital, in this case side by side with none other than Cartier-Bresson.

On this occasion, the selected authors, chosen by a jury made up of Carles Guerra, Silvia Omedes and Arianna Rinaldo, were Laura Aranda Lavado (in lower case by her own choice), Estefanía Bedmar, Malu Reigal and Alain Rojas Pastor, all of them born between late eighties and early nineties, in Catalonia except for Reigal from Murcia. The sample of his works already brings together projects that move between analog and digital methods, experimental development and the manipulation of videographic images or images taken from archives; Thematically, they have studied memory, both family memory and that linked to objects and territories, as well as the possibilities of approaching photographic language from a personal and ethnographic approach.

The journey begins with Bedmar, who graduated in Journalism and later graduated in Photography. In front of his house in Cerdanyola del Vallès there is an old landfill, Can Planes, whose surface area is equivalent to twenty football fields: it officially stopped being used in 1970, but no subsoil decontamination has been carried out since then. But the toxic waste was buried under tons of earth. Although this area of ​​the Barcelona town is arid and apparently hostile, with vegetation growing uncontrollably and tubes protruding from the ground, for this author these spaces are very much like home: there she has lived the experiences of her childhood and youth; That is the reason why I have decided to redefine these places as domestic and private environments, perhaps as conducive as any other as settings for experiences.

His images derive from the use of experimental and damaged film reels and archival photographs and the resource of accidental veiling, which serve Bedmar to evoke the degradation in the surroundings of this landfill and also to delve into the dualities that this space arouses in him, for the who experiences both belonging and a certain rejection.

Estefania Bedmar. In the patio of my house, 2023. © Estefanía Bedmar

Taking over at KBr is Laura Aranda Lavado, a photographer from Granollers who graduated in Social and Cultural Anthropology and has also trained in advertising graphics, documentary photography and photojournalism. His proposal is titled I also wanted to be Robert Capa, but not take his photosand is nourished by a conversation between the author and herself about her way of conceiving the photographic discipline: she considers it a territory of encounter between emotions, speculations and visual experiences. His method when carrying out this series has been autoethnography: he has started from the analysis of his own and then moved towards the study of the collective.

The fifteen images that make up this photoessay they are for her artifacts-tools: they come from the archive that has been shaped in the last twenty years, in a process of reappropriation that oscillates between the conceptual and the material, and we will see each one printed in ink on different colored papers, in order to break with the austere aesthetic of photographs that are normally printed on white. It was proposed to elucidate to what extent they could be taken as part of a personal diary, as a speculative tool and social document.

Laura Aranda Lavado, I also wanted to be Robert Capa, but not take his photos., 2021-2023. Digital photographs and archival images. © laura aranda washing
laura aranda washing. I also wanted to be Robert Capa, but not take his photos, 2021-2023 © laura aranda lavado

Malu Reigal, architect who has also studied photography and design, brings to Barcelona Bread, posh and beansa project closely linked to its origins: to the exploration of the relationships of affection that are generated in the very masculine environments where competitive pigeons are raised and trained, a practice in which his grandfather and uncle have been used. Reigal has been interested in looking at the way in which these rituals, which are inherited from generation to generation, have given rise to homogeneous identities and, in turn, the constant need for each individual to develop a specificity within the group. In short, he has attended to the relationships of these men with each other and with the birds.

Malu Reigal. Bread, posh and beans, 2021-in progress. © Malu Reigal
Malu Reigal. Bread, posh and beans, 2021-in progress. © Malu Reigal

Finally, Alain Rojas Pastor, graduated in Multimedia and master in Documentary Video and Photography at Idep, teaches us Vestigea work focused on our relationships with objects throughout life in which he started from the collection of his mother’s belongings and the stories that accompanied them. This photographer, born in Esplugues de Llobregat, remembers that these pieces, despite their theoretical humility, can contain emotions and memories, making us, at times, relive the past and certain human connections. The ones he has used for this series are very diverse (handkerchiefs, combs, dried flowers) and he has not excluded biological remains.

Alain Rojas Pastor. Vestigia, 2023. © Alain Rojas Pastor
Alain Rojas Pastor. Vestigia, 2023. © Alain Rojas Pastor

KBr Flama’24

KBr MAPFRE Foundation

Avenida del Litoral, 30

Barcelona

From October 11, 2024 to January 26, 2025

Similar Posts